Ep.1 – Arriving in Australia at 11

Hi everyone, this is Susan. Today, I want to share what it was like when I first started school in Australia.

I came to Australia at the end of 1998, and from 1999 I went to a language school. It was a place for kids who couldn’t speak English at all. On my first day, I realized everyone in the class was just like me. We all knew the alphabet, maybe a simple phrase like “What’s your name?”, and that was it.

At first, our conversations were made of hand gestures, facial expressions, and little drawings on scrap paper. We laughed at our mistakes, and somehow we understood each other without really knowing the words. That feeling—that we were all in the same boat—gave me a strange kind of comfort.

After about six months, something amazing happened. One day, we realized we were actually talking to each other in English. Not perfectly, of course, but enough to share our stories, our jokes, even our secrets.

Less than a year later, I was ready to enter a regular middle school. It wasn’t easy, but walking into that new classroom, I felt proud. Because I knew: language wasn’t just about words. It was about courage, connection, and learning to grow in a new world.