Reflective Essay on my Immigration Experience

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND MULTICULTURAL SOCIETIES 1
Reflective Essay on my Immigration Experience
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INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND MULTICULTURAL SOCIETIES2
Reflective essay on my immigration experience
For as long as I could remember, it has always been my dream to study in Australia. All I
could talk about was going to Australia getting their first class education and experiencing life
there. Australia has a good reputation especially in terms of how they treat immigrants and thus I
felt that I would face a few challenges while there. Also, their universities are ranked among the
best in the world. Once I got the opportunity, I applied for the chance to further my studies there
and when I got a positive response it was one of the happiest days of my life. I knew in Australia
I would get the opportunity to further my career far much better than I could have done at home.
I have had a variety of challenges and good experiences in Australia that I will remember
for the rest of my life. The day I landed in Australia, I was so excited I could not keep still so
much so people at the airport were looking at me weirdly. I could care less about them since they
did not know how happy and grateful I was to be in Australia. The second reaction I had was
culture shock for me since the first thing I saw at the airport was white people doing manual
work or asking for money on the street which was very weird for me since where I am from
white people were seen as the rich people and they did not do manual work at all they employed
us to do that kind of work (Rienties, Beausaert, Grohnert, Niemantsverdriet, and Kommers,
2012, pp. 690). Also, there were very few people walking around which was quite different from
home where the streets were always packed.
However, reality also set in when I realized that I had to share my living quarters with
other new migrants and strangers to me and it was a bit hard. I had to adjust to living with them
and it was difficult since their practices were quite different for me. One difference that was
quite clear between me and my new roommates was our food, they ate food that at home was
considered weird or disgusting. This was quite hard for me to adjust since just the smell made me