Maria Rincon

 

Welcome to my blog!

2016-09-26

Hola amigos! 大家好！Welcome to my blog! It is with great joy and honour that I am writing my first blog post as a MCVP 2016 finalist. I hope everyone can get to know me more through this personal blog.

You might already know that I am of mixed descent, but here's a little bit of a story on how I became the multicultural person I am today.

I was born in Colombia, South America to a Chinese mother and a Colombian father. When I was four years old I spent a year living in Cheng Du, China with my aunt in order to learn Chinese. The funny part about this story is that when I went back to Colombia, I completely forgot my Spanish! So from the age of 5 to 7, I continued to speak Chinese with my mother, but re-learned Spanish at school and with my father. 

A picture of my lovely parents taken 20 years ago. Who do I look like more? My father and mother met in Beijing, China. He was studying Chinese medicine and she was studying at the Beijing Film Academy. 这是我妈妈爸爸20年前的照片!  

My first birthday. Look at the enormous cake! 我一岁生日！是不是蛋糕很大啊？

When I was eight years old, my family and I immigrated to Vancouver, Canada. The transition was difficult at first and I had to learn another language—English. I remember reading a lot of English books and watching TV shows like Dragon Tales and Arthur to improve my English. It was not until grade 5 that I passed all levels of ESL and became fluent in English.

My first birthday in Canada! 我第一次在加拿大过生日。

Somehow after picking up English, I found a passion for languages and have learned Cantonese and a bit of French. Vancouver has a large Chinese community and I was always exposed to Cantonese. However, it was after I did a university exchange at the Chinese University of Hong Kong that the wheels in my brain began to turn. As for French, I found it easy to learn due to its similarities with Spanish. Je pense que le français est une langue romantique!

Graduating from Simon Fraser University in June 2016. I received a Bachelor of Arts in Communications with distinction and a Certificate in Liberal Arts. 今年六月大学毕业了！

The magical part about knowing more than one language is being able to communicate with (almost) anyone in the world. If I ever have the chance to learn another language (which I will probably do in the future), it will be Japanese. I fell in love with Japan after a high school student exchange and hope I can go back there one day! It isn't easy keeping up the fluency in every language, but I try my best and feel lucky to call such a multicultural city like Vancouver my home.

What's one language you wish you were fluent in?

 

Thanks for reading! Until next time,

Maria 王思思