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Jeremy: So you were 12 when you came to Canada.
杰里米：你在12岁的时候搬去加拿大生活。
Abidemi: That's right.
阿比德米：没错。
Jeremy: Do you remember anything that was either really similar or really different from how teachers taught or from the classroom experience? Were they more or less the same or were they shockingly different?
杰里米：就老师所教的内容和课堂学习来说，你记不记得有哪些相似的地方，又有哪些不一样的地方？大体上是相同的还是说完全不同？
Abidemi: Actually, I think they were different in a lot of ways. For some reason, I had finished my grade 6, which is like primary 6; they called it in Nigeria, which is the end of high school—no, sorry. The end of elementary school in Nigeria. So when I came to Canada, they put me into grade 7 thinking it's the next level. But my level was higher so they put me into grade 8 after that. So I got to skip a grade, which was really great. But I remember in terms of the way of thinking; in my English literature class, we had a conversation and we had to finish a story. And it was like, "Suddenly, something appeared in the sky. What is it?" And all my classmates were, "It's a UFO." For me, I'd never heard of a UFO. So they were like it's a UFO. It makes somebody disappear, it picks up somebody, and one of their classmate and another person disappears. But in my essay, I'm like—it was just weird. I had a totally different way of thinking and processing things. And that really surprised my teachers because when they wrote my composition, they compared it to the rest of the class, to my classmates and they were like, "Wow, this is interesting that you're the same age and we're all speaking the same language, but the way we view things is very different." And I guess, to me as well, it was my first exposure to cultural differences. And then after that, many years later, coming to Japan and being different again, in a different setting, it made me think back to that time thinking, wow, you can't always expect the same things. Differences come in weird places sometimes.
阿比德米：我认为在很多方面都存在不同。基于一些原因，我在尼日利亚念完了六年级，在尼日利亚这被称为初级教育，相当于我完成了高中……抱歉。更正一下，我在尼日利亚完成了小学教育。我到加拿大时，他们让我从七年级开始上，他们认为那应该是下一个阶段的学业。可是我的教育程度比七年级高，所以后来他们让我从八年级开始读。我跳了一级，这感觉非常好。我记得思维方式存在很大差异。在英语文学课上，有一个会话环节，老师让我们完成一个故事。大概是这样的，“突然天空中出现了一个东西。那是什么？”其他同学的回答都是“不明飞行物”。而我从来没听说过不明飞行物。他们都认为那是不明飞行物，会让某个人消失，它会抓走某个人，然后会有个同学或者是其他人消失。可是我在作文中写得是……这实在太不可思议了。我和其他人的思维方式和处理事情的方式完全不同。这让我的老师非常惊讶，他们在看我的作文时，将我的作文和班里其他同学的作文进行了比较，他们的想法是“哇哦，这太有意思了，你和其他学生年龄一样，我们说的语言也一样，可是你看待事情的角度完全不同。”我想，这可能是我第一次接触到文化差异。许多年以后，我来到日本，我又经历了这种不同，经历了不同的环境，这让我想起了那个时候，不能总是期待同样的事情。差异有时会在意想不到的地方出现。
Jeremy: I see.
杰里米：我明白了。
Abidemi: So yeah, that's one thing I remember. But a lot of things were the same. We are the same, and yeah, different.
阿比德米：那是我记得的其中一件事。不过大部分事情是一样的。既相同又存在差异。
Jeremy: So Abidemi, just in terms of sort of the simple things in life, when you came to Canada, were there any foods or drinks that you were particularly fond of right away or thought were particularly strange?
杰里米：阿比德米，现在来说说生活中简单的事情，你到加拿大以后，有没有哪种食物或是饮品让你马上就喜欢上了，或者有没有让你觉得很奇怪的食物？
Abidemi: Hmm, very good question. Food, a lot of food was all right, right off the bat, like we didn't have any difficulties with that. But one thing I do remember was nacho chips. We were not used to cheese, the taste of cheese. So my sisters and I, what we would do is we would buy nacho chips, like, Doritos—I don't know if everyone knows that—and we would wash it because the cheesy taste was strange. So we would wash it before eating it and then we would eat it. And I have some friends who will just stare at us, like, "What's the point? Why would you buy that flavor of chips? That's the whole point, to taste that." But we were like, "No, we can't eat this." But eventually now, I love Doritos. I have grown accustomed to the taste.
阿比德米：嗯，这个问题非常好。大部分食物都很好，我马上就适应了加拿大的食物，在食物方面我们没遇到什么问题。墨西哥辣炸玉米片令我印象深刻。我们之前不习惯奶酪的味道。我姐姐和我在买墨西哥辣炸玉米片以后，比如我们去买多利多滋，我不知道是不是所有人都知道这个，我们会用水去洗那个玉米片，因为奶酪的味道太奇怪了。我们在吃之前会用水冲一下，然后再吃。我有一些朋友会盯着我们看，问我们：“这样有什么意义？那你们为什么要买这种口味的玉米片？既然买了，就要品尝它的味道”。而我们会说：“不行，我们吃不了这种味道。”不过现在我非常喜欢吃多利多滋。我已经适应那个味道了。
Jeremy: You probably made it healthier though.
杰里米：不过你之前那种吃法可能更健康。
Abidemi: That's true.
阿比德米：没错。
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