Témoignages du Canada

Tobias spent an academic year in British Columbia

I decided to spend a year in a foreign country to learn the language and also about other cultures. This hopefully will help me to get better marks in school, better understanding for other people from other countries and finally to find a better job. It was really hard for me to leave my whole life behind for a year, because of course I had to leave my family and all my friends.
My trip to Canada started at 4 in the morning and I arrived at Vancouver airport at night. I got picked up by my guardian. She drove me to Abbotsford to my host family's house.

My new school was WJ. Mouat Senior Secondary, which was one of the best schools in Abbotsford. It was also a very good school for doing sports. I had really nice teachers and found a lot of friends in this school. They helped me to survive the first couple of months, which were the hardest of the whole year. The WJ. Mouat school was so different to my school back home. The school was pretty crowded, because it was under construction. Also we had only 4 subjects over one semester and those subjects we had every day. One block was 1:20 hours long. The main difference in the way of teaching is, that at home the teachers give you so much stuff at once to learn and in Canada they give you only a little bit to learn at a time. In Canada they also give you more time to practise this stuff until you really know it. This makes school way easier and way more relaxed than back home. Additionally to the academic courses like English, French, Math and Chemistry I took the subject ComRec, where you learn stuff about outdoor sports. In this class we went out at weekends to go camping, hiking, river rafting, kayaking, climbing, paintballing and skiing. Of course we prepared these trips with lessons during the blocks (can. for period).

After Christmas break I joined the rugby team at W.J. Mouat. After school we met 4 times a week for a 2 hour practice. It was an awesome experience for me. One time we went to Penticton, a city in the mountains at a huge lake to play at a tournament. The whole event was organized as a mystery tour that meant the players didn't know where they were going. The only thing we knew was that we were going somewhere for a couple of days. It was so much fun. We didn't win the tournament, because we played for fun. We switched players around so I had to play on positions I never played before and didn't really know what to do. At the end of the season we were so good that we qualified for the Provincial Championships of British Columbia. Our goal was to finish as a top ten team. For a weekend we stayed at UBC, which is one of Vancouver’s universities. In the end we finished 9th place, which is pretty good, if you think that the state of BC has three times the size of Germany!

During the winter I spent nearly every weekend up in the mountains skiing with friends. We went to Hemlock, Manning Park and Baker, which is in the USA. One time I even went to Sun Peaks, which is near Kamloops. On one weekend in the spring a friend and I went to Savery Island. Savery is one of the many islands north of Vancouver. To get there we had to take 2 ferries and one water taxi. There we spent the days beachcombing, swimming, kayaking and watching numerous bald eagles. On summer weekends a friend and I went boating on a nearby lake. We had lots of fun knee boarding and tubing.

But even when we weren't doing one of those things I had a blast hanging out with my friends. Over the weekends I often slept over at their house. The only time I really was homesick, was during Christmas time, when everyone was spending this break with his family. If I had problems, I could go to one of my friends and their families to find someone I could talk to. Also I could talk to my brother using skype, he was in New Zealand for a year so he was 21 hours ahead of me in time, that means he had nearly the same time as me. Only he was a day ahead of me. I talked to my parents once a week over skype as well.

The last month was one of the best but also one of the saddest months because everyone knew I was leaving. It definitely was an awesome year for me and it was pretty hard to say goodbye to everyone. I learned a lot of new things, got fluent in the language now and of course I met a lot of new friends. If someone asks me if he should do an exchange year, I will tell him that he should do it for sure. And if someone asks me if I want to do it again I will say YES.