It was just one month ago that I returned to Canada after a year-long hiatus from fresh air and communicable English. Sitting in the Vancouver airport during my seven-hour layover before my final flight to Calgary, I marvelled at the way the mountains - a solid day’s-hike away - could be seen clear of pollution and obstructing buildings.
On a weekday months before, my coworkers and I would look out from our office window on the 25th floor in Beijing’s financial district, across the never-ending skyline that was so dense with smog the sun couldn’t be seen on a sunny day, and feel compelled to compare China’s Air Quality Index with that of our hometowns’.
Ottawa measured in at 25 on a scale of Very Good to Use An Oxygen Tank, whereas Beijing hovered around 240. But with a population of 27 million in the capital city, all needing places to work and sleep, the numbers added up.
The difference in people per square kilometre made the short drive from the Calgary International Airport to what I now call home seem like a trip through the Wild West though. “There’s so much empty space!” I kept thinking.
My sister gave me my first southern Alberta weather talk - in English I might add, another unusual adjustment after learning to communicate rather effectively by charades while travelling through Southeast Asia. She enlightened me to the Chinooks and high elevation, so in other words, the reason snow doesn’t stay on the ground long enough to make a snowman and why I had that elephant-sitting-on-my-chest feeling the next morning.
I quickly realized Chinooks and big trucks would become popular elevator conversation starters.
The first few days home, the amount of English threw me for a loop though. I almost answered, “ting bu dong,” (Mandarin for “I don’t understand” and the most practical phrase I’ve learned in my 22 years) when the lady in the Roughnecks jersey standing across from me in the elevator commented on the late-April snow. One, snow in April? I was swimming in the Gulf of Thailand on New Years Day. Two, there was not a hint of an accent in her voice (but there was an ‘eh!’).
While in Beijing, I worked as a writer and editor for a travel company that provided information on and packaged trips to destinations in Asia, Europe and Africa. The following six months, I travelled through nine countries including Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Indonesia, freelance writing and doing photography. If that doesn’t exemplify overcoming cross-cultural language barriers, I’m not sure what does. So small talk about lacrosse and warming winds shouldn’t of had me fumbling with my native tongue.
I’m quickly getting back in the saddle, literally and figuratively. I started a photography collection of all the horse statues I could find in Calgary and its surrounding areas, invested in a pair of cowboy boots and got my first run-through on how to two-step. But stopping there would make me one of the thousands that just come West for Stampede every summer, whereas I’d like to identify with the ones that tough out the winters.
I look forward to getting beneath the surface in Rocky View County, meeting the people and attending the events that make up this great community as the newest reporter at the Airdrie City View and Rocky View Weekly, and, of course, learn how to properly cook an Alberta steak.
