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One of my largest challenges was the language barrier, although I'm from a family who is
primarily Croatian, unfortunately I didn't learn the language growing up, so it was really
difficult. But with that said, it was really nice that I had my host sister and I had some
of the youth that were there to volunteer as translators. So that was really cool. But
once again, it was extremely difficult, especially as an educator, seeing, for instance, some
children being bullied and not really being able to help. My last struggle wasn't the
culture shock going there, but coming home. So I had an amazing experience in Bosnia,
and I had a great support system. I had volunteers on the one hand, my host family, my family
and friends back in Canada, who I can converse with, through mail or e-mail, although it
was very slow there. And so that was really great. But coming home, it was very sudden
and to leave a host family very abruptly, to go back to a culture that's very fast-paced,
and not really having family values as a core was very difficult for me. So it was all about
trying to find outlets, so for example I started volunteering with Engineers Without Borders,
and with WPPRIG, Waterloo's Public Research Interest Group, just trying to make sure I
stayed as much involved with the community as possible. That really helped me with the
transition.