My family arrived in Canada in the summer, the season of extreme heat and revealing clothes. Now, you can imagine how crazy it would have been for us to step into the airport. We saw women walking in bikinis, and this was such a huge culture shock because I assumed such a scene was only at the beach, but I saw this at the airport, although it was the summer season.
Summer was the season experienced 80% of the time in Nigeria; hence I avoided being exposed to the sun and always longed to return home to the cold air conditioning. On the contrary, I see Canadians exposing their skin to sunlight to get tanned; they are eager to leave the house during summer; some would even sit all day in the sun to “tan” their skin. I could never wrap my head around why they’d go out of their way to roast in the sun until winter happened.
How I felt about winter and summer when I first came to Canada has almost wholly flipped to the opposite. I was excited about winter; I would watch movies and tv shows with kids in the snow and longed to have the feeling; alas, I experienced it!. The first day I went out to play in the snow quickly became one of my very last. When I went out, I had a terrible headache. One of the ones you get from cold, my face quickly became numb, but I ignored all that to “play” in the snow. I went ahead and threw a couple of snowballs, made a snow angel, and attempted to build a snowman. When I got back inside, my fingers felt frozen, and I thought the best way to keep it warm was to run some hot water on it. That was an experience I would never forget because it stung so much. If you want to know how bad it stings, you can try playing with snow without gloves then running some hot water on it (Disclaimer: Please do not attempt this, it could lead to Frostbite)
Overall, migrating to Canada is a fantastic experience, and it’s very cool to see the differences between the Nigerian and Canadian cultures; it was fun experiencing them all!
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