0:03  
Every single small thing you I want to do, I realize that people do it differently or that I may not be able to do that here. And it was a culture shock.

0:15  
This is the story of Layal Adjoshe, a second year Ryerson student who is also a Syrian refugee. Adjusting to Canada's culture was a difficult task for her. While the conflict in Syria forced her to move, she also had another reason why she had to move to Canada.

0:33  
I'm originally Syrian. I have a Syrian father and Lebanese mother and we lived in Syria for a while. Once the we lived in Damascus, which is the capital. Once the events started happening, the revolution and all these, like and the civil war when when it was starting, we basically escaped. My mom's Lebanese, so we went to Lebanon naturally. We already had some sort of basis in Lebanon, so we already had a house there. We already had life. We weren't like the other refugees that had to actually leave their homes, leave their possessions. leave everything and start from zero. We kind of had a foundation in Lebanon. So I guess you can say we were like lucky, ironically enough,

1:23  
While Adjoshe thought she could easily restart a new life, she encountered a new conflict that forced her to leave Lebanon.

1:33  
A couple years later in Lebanon, so my mom is Lebanese, but she couldn't give me her nationality. She because you know, patriarchy and stuff. So I have a Syrian nationality in Lebanon and Lebanon is a country that has a law against employing people who are from outside the country like immigrants, or basically anyone who's not Lebanese. It's supposed to be for the protection of people who are actually Lebanese, so that the other people wouldn't take the jobs. Basically, how it affected me was that I could, I would be studying high school, getting good grades, going to university, graduating, and still not finding a job once I graduate. So I went to a very good university. I was getting A's, but knowing and I was putting a lot of hard work. And at the end of the day, I'd know that all this hard work is for nothing, because I'm going to graduate, and I won't be able to find a job. I can't work here legally. I had, I didn't have to leave it was for the sake of having a career and having a future. And it was so that you'd have rights because as a Syrian in Lebanon, you don't have any rights.

2:53  
Adjoshe decided to look at her options with where she could go. That was when she found an opportunity that would allow her to move from Lebanon.

3:03  
So I had already gone to university in Lebanon for one year. Coming here, I applied through Wesk World University Service of Canada. And through that program, it took me a year to actually go through all the steps. And within those steps while I was still in Lebanon, I was submitting my grades and applying to university. How it goes is that they choose the university for me, so I never actually chose Ryerson. Ryerson chose me basically and I ended up here.

3:39  
According to Statistics Canada, over 40,000 Syrian refugees have arrived in Canada in November 2015. Adjoshe came much later, she arrived in Canada on August 23, 2017.

3:57  
So I've been in Toronto for a year now, a bit more and it's it's been a very interesting journey, to say the least. I grew up like, I grew a lot and I went through a like, it had a really some really good times, some really bad ones. One thing I learned was how to basically adult. I came here at I had barely turned 18-19 and I was really like I was shocked by how fast life is here. How everybody's always busy all the time, everybody's always, you know, on the hustle. And that was not like it's a very individualistic society. And it's not something I'm used to because, you know, Arabs are very, how do you say it like they're very kind of all up in each other's business. They like we're all about the community, we're all about the, you know, that the society as a large group instead of it being just about the individual. It was very interesting and it was, it was pretty hard to get here, but I'd say like one year later, I'm very grateful and I could say that I learned a lot from my experience.