Wel­come to my new series, Ten Immi­grants, Ten Inter­views.

You guys all know my story by now, and you have a pretty good idea of what my life in Canada looks like. I thought it was time to let other immi­grants and new Cana­di­ans speak. I con­tacted ten of them, who each have their own story, their own rea­sons to come to Canada, their own point of view on how life is up North in the igloos. They all answered ten ques­tions, bring­ing a new per­spec­tive on immigration.

A new post will be pub­lished every Saturday.

Kha­tia Odze­lashvili (and the Cana­dian Par­lia­ment in the background)

Kha­tia Odze­lashvili is from Tbil­isi in Geor­gia, a coun­try located between East­ern Europe and West­ern Asia. She stud­ied law in Ger­many for four years, hop­ing to even­tu­ally come back home and work in Geor­gia. But while in Ger­many, she met her hus­band. They were both for­eign stu­dents and they decided to move some­where together to a third coun­try where they could set­tle. After much con­sid­er­a­tion, they agreed on Canada.

They applied for per­ma­nent res­i­dence under the skilled worker pro­gram and landed in 2008. They have been liv­ing in Ottawa since then.

You can fol­low Kha­tia Odze­lashvili on Twit­ter or see her pro­file here.

What brought you to Canada?

I had never thought about immi­grat­ing to Canada. I was study­ing in Ger­many to come back to my home coun­try, Geor­gia, and con­tribute to soci­ety. In Ger­many, I mar­ried some­one from totally dif­fer­ent coun­try. Nei­ther of us would have had sim­i­lar chances in a coun­try of our ori­gin, so we fig­ured it was best to move some­where else. We listed coun­tries (my hus­band listed Canada) and started dis­cussing the best choice. The more we researched Canada, the coun­try itself and peo­ple, econ­omy, his­tory etc. the more we real­ized this was the coun­try where we wanted to move.

Did you find the immi­gra­tion process dif­fi­cult?

Not really. I was lucky; my hus­band took care of all the paper­work! Actu­ally, when we applied for immi­gra­tion, we were still attend­ing classes at uni­ver­sity and we were very busy. We were approved the year before we grad­u­ated and were given a year to « land » in Canada. As soon as I com­pleted uni­ver­sity, I rushed to pack to Canada! Mov­ing itself was more dif­fi­cult than the immi­gra­tion process. Offi­cials were always friendly and pro­fes­sional, so things went quite smoothly.

How long did it take you to find a job that you liked in Canada?

I worked in a posi­tion I liked for a year. I was a law stu­dent in Ger­many. I had all my doc­u­ments cer­ti­fied but so far, the paper that for­mally rec­og­nizes my Ger­man degree as equal to a Cana­dian degree hasn’t helped much. It’s some­how under­stand­able. Law in Europe is dif­fer­ent from law in Canada, these are two dif­fer­ent sys­tems. So it will take time before I can reach my career goals. I started from the very bot­tom and I have seen some improve­ment the last two years. I have hopes.

Where did you learn French/ Eng­lish? What was your sec­ond lan­guage level when you first came to Canada?

I learned Eng­lish in school in Geor­gia, but in Ger­many, I had no one to speak Eng­lish with so I for­got a lot and def­i­nitely couldn’t improve my lan­guage skills.

I could under­stand the lan­guage and even com­mu­ni­cate basic things when I came here, but my Eng­lish was pretty bad. I started lis­ten­ing to CBC Radio One not only to improve my lan­guage skills but to inte­grate to the soci­ety. I also attended some lan­guage courses for new immi­grants. All that helped but I must say the atti­tude Cana­di­ans has towards me helped a lot too: they are very patient and help­ful. They lis­ten to you care­fully and try their best to under­stand … and they don’t want to dis­ap­point you. This kind of atti­tude makes a new­comer like me more con­fi­dent and it helps me to improve my English.

As for French, I didn’t speak it at all but I’m now start­ing to pick up some words. I just need time… Unfor­tu­nately, learn­ing a lan­guage takes time!

What was your biggest cul­ture shock?

At first, I felt here like Gagarin must have felt walk­ing on the moon. It was quite strange: every­thing was new.

Take the colour­ful bins on the street, for instance. I thought there were garbage bins! Now I know they are news­pa­pers bins. I didn’t know what the white light with a walk­ing per­son meant either, when cross­ing the street, so I kept on wait­ing for the green light (note from Zhu: in Ottawa, the cross­walk sig­nal fea­tures a red hand for do not cross and a white light with the pic­togram of a man to show you can cross). Oh, and bus dri­vers don’t sell tick­ets on the bus.

What haven’t you got­ten used to yet in Canada?

I don’t like when some peo­ple don’t care and throw garbage on the street instead of walk­ing two steps to deposit their garbage in the garbage bins pro­vided every­where. But this is def­i­nitely not what Cana­di­ans are gen­er­ally doing: a lot of peo­ple here actu­ally help clean up the Ottawa River every year!

Every­body is dif­fer­ent. We all have dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties, and because being Cana­dian also means being dif­fer­ent and cel­e­brat­ing our dif­fer­ences, then these dif­fer­ences even­tu­ally van­ish and we all become the same.

We are all dif­fer­ent. All of us have dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties, and because being Cana­dian also means to be dif­fer­ent and cel­e­brate our dif­fer­ences, then this dif­fer­ences van­ish in this per­spec­tive and we all become the same.

Did immi­grat­ing to Canada match your expectations?

Yes and no. There is no par­adise on earth. Peo­ple always face dif­fi­cul­ties, and there are always issues to work on. It’s not just about liv­ing in a great coun­try: you have to make it hap­pen and over­come prob­lems that can arise.

But because Canada is a free coun­try and because nobody stops you to improve your life, I do think that I came to a great coun­try. Canada over­matches my first expectations.

Do you find life expen­sive in Canada com­pared to your home country?

Canada is def­i­nitely more expen­sive then Geor­gia. Yet liv­ing here is way cheaper then liv­ing in Ger­many. Only a few busi­nesses have a monop­oly, such as phone and inter­net com­pa­nies, bank­ing etc. Except for that, peo­ple always have the choice to take their busi­ness else­where, which is good.

Will you apply for Cana­dian citizenship?

Yes, I am going to apply for cit­i­zen­ship in a year. I can’t believe I’m not even Cana­dian yet!

What advice would you give to some­one inter­ested in immi­grat­ing to Canada?

I would sug­gest prospec­tive immi­grants to read more about Canada. Visit rel­e­vant web­sites (such as those for new immi­grants, job search, edu­ca­tion etc.). You may also want to improve your Eng­lish and your French.

It is also impor­tant is also to con­nect to var­i­ous ser­vices for new immi­grants, they are very help­ful. But make sure you only use offi­cial sources and no mid­dle­men. You can start with the web­site of the min­istry of Cit­i­zen­ship and Immi­gra­tion.

Related arti­cles:

1. Nui: From Thai­land to Ottawa
2. Mourad Regragui: From Morocco To Ottawa
3. Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism (7÷10)
4. John Erick: from Venezuela to Montreal
5. Lucile And Mur­taza: From France and India to Montreal