“Welcome to New Brunswick”: The untold story of a young immigrant

Bravo welcomes his new life in Canada.

Esteban Bravo Calle sits behind the wheel of a white SUV, in the parking lot of Blockbuster. Shaggy brown hair and a single dread lock sticks out underneath his white baseball cap. Bravo’s hat matches the crisp white t-shirt that hangs on his thin frame. His left hand rests on the steering wheel and he wears an oversized watch on his thin wrist. Bravo’s dark brown eyes meet mine as I park my car next to his and roll down my window.

“Hola. ¿Como estas? ¿Te sigo?” he said.

“Hola. Si, está bien,” I said.

The passenger of my car, my roommate Paula Hidalgo, looked at me, squinted her eyes and tilted her head slightly. She asked where he was going to follow us to. Then I thought about what he had just said and realized that I had confused, “You follow me?” with “I follow you?”. During our phone call the mix of English and Spanish had confused us both- to the point where we didn’t actually know where we were holding the interview. I had brought Hidalgo with me for this very reason- to be my translator if my knowledge of the Spanish language failed me or if Bravo’s knowledge of the English language confused him.

On March 6 last year, Bravo and his family emigrated from Medellin, Colombia to Fredericton, New Brunswick. According to Statistics Canada, Bravo is one of the 1,803 immigrants who came to the province between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008.

Japan’s job market: a pressure Canadians will never have to experience

Ayaka Kukihara working hard on last minute resumes.

It’s three in the morning and Ayaka Kukihara is sitting at her kitchen table. She leaves for a job fair today and she’s still working on her resumes.

Her resumes aren’t as simple as typing job experiences and educational background into one neat page. Each resume has to be handwritten in Japanese characters, and the content varies amongst companies. Essentially, she’s combining a cover letter and a resume into one.

“For me, the Japanese resume was the hardest part of preparing. It probably takes three or four hours for one resume. And you can’t correct them, if you make a mistake you have to re-write the whole thing with another paper,” Kukihara said.

Kukihara, along with other students from St. Thomas, went to an international student job fair in Boston, looking for a job at Japanese companies.

Students voicing their opinions: VOTE!

At the time of the last federal election many current undergraduate students were too young to vote.

Picture from Boston.com

This year on October 14 they will get their chance to exercise their right to vote. The Student Unions of both University of New Brunswick and St. Thomas University have been busy preparing for the election and educating students about the candidates.

Melissa Wah, Vice President Education of the St Thomas Student Union, has been busy helping organize events for students to help educate students about the voting process. But as a first time voter (she was too young to vote last federal election), she has learned a lot about the process herself.

“I’ll be honest, I had no idea how to vote or where to register. I have been learning along the way,” Wah said.

Facebook prevents us from letting go of our pasts

Logging into Facebook

I came to school in Canada to start over, to make new friends and leave behind my high school peers that had different values than me. But now I wonder, did I really escape? I only talk to a few close friends from my home town, but that doesn’t mean that others aren’t checking up on me. There’s a chance that the boy who sat next to me in grade 10 math knows that I now have straight hair (my hair was permed all through high school), or that a girl I did an English project with sees that I visited Quebec City during March Break. Clearly I didn’t tell these people these details- but there is a chance they saw them on Facebook.

I’ll admit I enjoy checking up on old classmates from time to time. It’s nice to find out that Sara made it into grad school, or that John is taking a semester off to volunteer in Africa. Facebook is extremely helpful when you have a question about building websites and remember that guy in your art class (whom you haven’t spoken to in three years) used to build them in his free time. Without Facebook the chances of you tracking him down to ask him are slim to none- but with Facebook you could find him, ask him, and possibly even get a response in less than 15 minutes.

US dollar exchange is declining: More Canadians are shopping in the US

On their way back to Fredericton from Boston, Jon Scerey & Holly Russell stopped in New Hampshire with a mission- to buy cheap liquor and cigarettes.

They grabbed a shopping cart and began their shopping. They loaded two half gallon bottles of Bacardi rum (which were on sale if you bought two and even came with a mail-in rebate), a half gallon of Beefeater gin and a twenty-six ounce bottle of Screech.

They also stopped at a grocery store to buy Miller Chill, the latest Miller beer product that isn’t sold in New Brunswick. They spent $93.95 on alcohol.

Parent wants the choice to opt out of French teaching

Learning French at an early age isn’t the only reason why people are concerned with the education minister’s plan to eliminate early French immersion.

Lisa Weir, a parent from St. John, has been attending rallies, doing interviews and writing letters against Kelly Lamrock’s new plan for French education.

But Weir doesn’t want her daughter, Kennedy Weir, to be educated in French. She wants the choice for her daughter to be taught in English.

“Right now in her phase of language development it [the intensive French program] doesn’t make sense. Kennedy is working really hard to grasp the English language. She doesn’t need French on top of that,” Weir said.

North Americans celebrate St. Patrick’s Day twice

The Catholic Church gave North American students an excuse to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day twice this year.

Although the original intent was to avoid Holy Week, a lot of students aren’t even aware of why the switch was made. They just see it as a good reason to celebrate the Irish holiday more than once.

Isabel Pereira is one of these students. She was out at a house party on Saturday, the “new” St. Patrick’s Day, wearing a green shirt and a plastic green hat.

“Sadly, like most other holidays St. Patrick’s Day has become a commercialized holiday, so I don’t think anyone cares about the change in date. Saturday is a better day for going out anyways.” Pereira said.

St. Thomas addresses the issue of stress and anxiety among faculty

Roger Moore and Ana Maldonado de-stressing after the workshop

Don Robinson stands with his legs shoulder-width apart and slowly raises his arms in front of him. He drops his elbows and lets his wrists fall back towards him and down to his sides. He continues to make movements like this, almost as if he’s dancing.

But he’s not dancing, he was demonstrating the first four forms of tai chi chuan, a soft martial art form that is created by over 100 movements known as forms.

This demonstration was part of the workshop that St. Thomas’s Learning and Teaching Development (LTD) program gave on anxiety and stress management related to teaching.

Although tai chi is a martial art, it can be used to de-stress by focusing your mind and body on the moments. Robinson says it’s a good way to get away from the “chatter” of life for a bit and relax.

Roger Moore, the director of Teaching and Learning, organizes workshops that will benefit mostly the faculty, but also the students, of St. Thomas. Usually at the end of each term there is some type of workshop to do with stress and anxiety.

Experience is as important as high GPA: International Education Week helps students understand the importance of global education

Students and professors disscussed international education

Three students and two professors talked about their international experiences in a panel discussion about the challenges of international education. This was one of the many activities the University of New Brunswick had going on to celebrate International Education Week.

Silke Klenk, who works in the international relations office of UNB, had a big part in organizing the activities of the week. She feels it’s important for students to get international experience.

“Our main objective [at the international relations office] is to bring an international perspective into every aspect of the university-to the teaching in the classroom, to research and our service outreach,” Klenk said.

Klenk feels that students will most likely be working with people from all over the place and need to be prepared for this. Any international experience they can add to their lives can help them prepare.

Volunteer provides much needed help: Marylynn Cote talks about her trip to Guyana

Cote with one of her students

Marylynn Côté was immersed into the community of Parika, Guyana last summer for a five week program with Youth Challenge International. Although she didn’t have a choice on where she was sent, Côté immediately fell in love with the rich culture of Guyana.

Côté participated in various volunteer projects while she was there, the main one being teaching students at The Parika Community High-School.

Even though she’s back in Canada now, she still has a connection with that school and is doing everything she can to help the students. Currently she is collecting school supplies to send over to the kids.

Côté says that she had planned to send pictures back to Guyana and figured she should send some things that they needed at the same time.

“It’s a personal project, because I saw how much they are in need down there. I know the students , I know the teachers, I know the community. So it seems like a logical choice that I would send aid to this school specifically, but really all schools around the world are in need of supplies, help and aid, even in the United States, “ she said.