MOVING to a new high school is challenging enough, but imagine moving to a school in a whole new country where nobody spoke your natural language.
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You were by yourself and had to forge your own way.
When Xiaoyan Wang decided to move away from Shanghai in China to study years 11 and 12 in Bendigo, she knew there would be challenges.
She convinced her parents to let her go, but she admits she may have underestimated just how tough it would be.
“The first five or six months were difficult,” Yan said.
“Lots of Chinese students decide to only make friends with Chinese students, but I kind of don’t want to do that. I tried to make friends with local students, but I found this very hard.”
Yan has spoken of these struggles in a short film, to be shown at the Bendigo Library on Wednesday night.
Watch her short film below:
She took part in the Loddon Campaspe Multicultural Services project to allow young people from overseas to use film to document their lives in Bendigo.
Yan speaks about the anger and sadness she felt as she walked to Bendigo Senior Secondary College alone day after day, unable to connect with local students due to the language barrier and their existing friendship groups.
Instead, she sat alone in class, put her head down and got straight A’s. Yet she wanted more from her Australian experience.
She put on a brave face to her mother back in China.
“I didn’t want to go back (to China) because I thought that would disappoint my mum, and I’m afraid to tell her things, because if I say I’m sad, she’ll feel sad too,” Yan said.
Things quickly turned around at the start of 2017. New students arrived at BSSC and Yan found the confidence to approach a group in her favourite class, Chemistry.
“At some point I realised that if I really want to start a conversation, I need to speak first,” she said in her film.
As her confidence grew, she gained more and more friends who recently joined her to celebrate her 18th birthday party.
Yan also found a completely unexpected hobby – working as a trainer and physio at the Pyramid Hill footy club.
“This is the first time I saw footy happen, I thought ‘wow, it’s so violent’,” she said.
“I’m the First Aid person. I just follow the senior trainer and my coworkers. I give the football players water, and tape their injuries.
“We see lots of the countryside side, lots of small towns.”
Yan now wants to stay in Australia to study at a university in Melbourne.
Her film is one of five to be showcased in Bendigo on Wednesday. The other films follow the experiences of an Iranian student at BSSC, a student from Fujian studying at BSSC, a group of Karen students at Crusoe College and an Afghan Hazara student.
The public is invited to watch the films and meet the students at Bendigo Library from 5pm to 7pm Wednesday.