There was a veterinary exam I could take to be allowed to work in Australia, but I had heard it was really difficult. It would test everything I had learnt in my entire five-year degree, which I had done not only 15 years earlier, but also in Italian. And it would...

I thought my English would be fine in Australia, but as soon as we arrived, I had to face a new reality. My husband’s friend came to pick us from the airport, and although I was trying my best to understand what he was saying and the jokes he was making, I couldn’t...

To escape the war in Syria, I needed to get a passport. So every day, from 6am till 5pm, I would patiently stand in line outside the immigration office. This was highly stressful because at that time cannons and machine guns were being fired from the top of the...

By the time I finished medical school, riots and chaos were constant in Venezuela. Sometimes I felt like I was trapped in George Orwell's 1984! For example, I needed to trade things with my colleagues like toilet paper or deodorant. And we didn’t even have basic...

When America invaded Iraq, life became very tough. Suddenly, everything was closed, and there was no more school for me. Every night, we ran to the basement of a hotel opposite our house, for safety. It was pretty scary. I still remember hearing the rockets nearby and...

When I was just seven years old, my mum died in a terrorist attack. That was the time of the anti-Sikh riots in India. Our whole family were going to a wedding when our bus was bombed. Unfortunately, I remembered what happened quite clearly, and for quite a few years,...

At the end of my last year in high school, I met a girl in the year below called Noémie. I told her I liked her a lot, but that I was going to Australia at the end of the month. And that maybe I would see her again one day. With all its high-rises, Perth seemed like a...

(CW: Attempted Suicide) In year 10, I had a crush on my teacher. I even wrote her a letter, and sent her flowers. But when I told my friends, everyone started laughing and said, “Why did you do that? She’s your teacher! And how come you're sending it to a female...

When I was 6, my mom told me that I had no future in Ukraine, so I always knew I had to find a way to get out. Then, while I was studying Economics, I used one single chance I had to do one semester abroad in Germany. And in that semester, I basically enrolled myself...