Bodwell High School - Review #1

I finished at Bodwell this past April. Two years in North Vancouver, looking out at the water from a hill where you can see downtown and the mountains at the same time. Came from Brazil as a boarding student not knowing anyone. The school has about 400 students from over 40 countries and everyone is far from home so everyone understands what that loneliness feels like. That changes how people treat each other. Less pretending. More honesty.

The best thing that happened to me at Bodwell was a phone call at Covenant House. I was asking a stranger for money, stumbling over my English, and the person on the other end said take your time. They did not hang up. They waited. I finished my pitch and they said yes. I cried after hanging up. Not because of the money. Because someone was kind to me when I was struggling with words. That moment made me believe I could do hard things in a second language.

I would have joined Model UN earlier. Waited a whole semester because I was scared of speaking in public in English. That was stupid. No one cared about my accent. They cared about my ideas. Advice for someone new is this. The first month is the hardest. You will be lonely and tired and confused. Keep showing up. The loneliness fades. The tiredness becomes normal. The confusion turns into learning. And when you graduate, pack your bags slowly. Take time to say goodbye to your dorm room. You will miss it more than you expect.

What I liked most about Bodwell was that nobody fit in perfectly and that was fine. We were all from different places, all missing home, all learning to speak each other's languages and eat each other's food and understand each other's jokes. The school did not try to make us the same. It just put us together and trusted us to figure it out. I graduated in April. I am still figuring it out.

The roof where the Astronomy Club meets is the best spot on campus. Go up there on a clear night before you graduate. The waterfront path is good for walking when you need to think. The snack bar has instant noodles from different countries. Try the ones you do not recognize. And when you miss home, cook something from your country in the dorm kitchen. Someone will smell it and come ask what you are making. That is how you make friends.

Medicine is the goal. Surgery or neuroscience, I am still deciding. Bodwell has a Health and Well Being program where we explored neuroscience and biotechnology and that class was the reason I got excited about school every week. My grades were solid. Not perfect but I worked hard and my teachers saw that. Graduating in April meant finishing early, packing my dorm room, saying goodbye to people I might never see again. That last week was harder than any exam.

Not an athlete. Walked to the waterfront sometimes, did yoga in my room, stayed moving. Bodwell has a gym and kids who play soccer and basketball. I watched them from the window and felt happy for them and also happy that I did not have to run in the rain.

Went to a talent show once. A girl from Japan played piano and a boy from Mexico sang and I cried a little because everyone was showing their home in their art. That is the thing about a school with 40 countries. Every performance is also a goodbye to somewhere else.

Covenant House was hard. Made care packages for youth experiencing homelessness and called donors to ask for support. My English is good but asking strangers for money in a second language made my hands shake. I did it anyway. Taught English and Science to kids in Brazil before moving here. Grade 4 to 8. Some of them did not have good supplies or good schools. I showed up every week because they needed someone who would not quit on them.

My roommate was from Mexico. We spoke Spanish together when we missed home and English together when we were doing homework and Portuguese together when I was teaching her bad words. The dorm had common areas with couches and a kitchen where we made food from our countries on weekends. Someone was always cooking rice or frying plantains or boiling tea. The dorm parents knocked before coming in and checked on us at night. They asked if we ate. That small question meant a lot when your real parents are 10,000 kilometers away. I miss those evenings now.

The dining hall served food from everywhere. Rice and beans on days when the Brazilian students cheered. Curry on days when the Indian students smiled. The food was not amazing but it was not bad either. The best meals were the ones where a group of us sat together and no one was on their phone because we were too busy talking about home.

North Vancouver is quiet. Trees and houses and the ocean. I took the bus to downtown sometimes, went to the aquarium or just walked by the water. Lonsdale Quay has a market with food from different countries. I went there when I was craving something specific. Grouse Mountain is close. Never made it up. Maybe I will go back one day just to see the view.

Everyone is international. That is the whole point of Bodwell. My closest friends were from Brazil because we shared the same jokes and the same homesickness. But I also had friends from Mexico and Japan and Vietnam and Nigeria. The Student Parliament put me in rooms with people I would not otherwise talk to. That was the best part. Debate club too. You argue with someone from a different culture and you realize they see the world completely differently and that is not a problem. That is the point.