Personal Narrative: Coming To America

Today I will be talking about the first time I came to America and how it has changed my life. When I was five years old, I started first grade in Turkey. I was afraid because my parents signed me up late and I thought I wouldn’t be able to make friends. Both my parents came with me for the first day of school and I made them wait outside of my classroom because they couldn’t come inside the classroom. The first time I entered class, all the kids were with their friends and the teacher had assigned me in between two girls.

Challenge Essay Moving into The United States that has a different language has been the biggest obstacle that I have ever faced, especially with the fact that there was a time where I didn’t understand a single word of that language called English. This was a big obstacle in my life since I was raised in Mexico where the prime language, there is Spanish and that was the only language I knew back then, it was until the day had come where my family and I had to move into the United States due to the violence that has been happening in Mexico. I consider those times the most difficult ones of my whole life because I had to work triple than what I normally did in school in order for me to learn a huge complex language.

“What was it like?” I asked, scrambling to keep up with my aunt. She paused, her tall thin frame standing in the doorway. Dishes lay scattered around us. Dinner had ended hours ago, and everybody was upstairs..

I can remember it like it was yesterday. My parents left me when I was fifteen years old to go to America. I thought to myself for one year, they left me here to starve, live, and die alone in eastern Europe. When I was sixteen years old I got ready to move to America and start a new life.

Its 1914 and I just got the news that we were finally going to America! We have been waiting for several years trying to save up money and figure everything out. Going to America is almost every ones dream here in Europe. Just like Oscar Hammerston said, “ You gotta have a dream.

He was already expecting my failures and mistakes. I experienced difficulties finding out who I was because I was too preoccupied with doing everything my father was telling me. I felt so cheated, the life I wish I lived was snatched from me. I do not know where it came from, maybe from the exhaustion of listening to my father, but when I entered high school, I switched from not wanting to fail for my parents to wanting to succeed for myself. I challenged myself academically and socially.

I have not been able to participate in athletics nearly as much as I would have liked. I started running track in the spring of my seventh grade year. I performed surprisingly well and decided to participate in cross country the next fall. I spent the summer training and preparing for the season, and it definitely showed. I ran in the varsity race for my first cross country meet ever.

Growing up in an immigrant household in America, was difficult. I didn’t live, I learned to adapt. I learned to adapt to the fact that I did not look like any of my peers, so I changed. Adapted to the fact that my hair texture would never be like any of my peers, so I changed. Adapted to the fact that I was not as financially well off as my peers, so I changed.

My mom told me that I needed to start preparing my luggage. I was very confused, so I ask my mom, “get ready for what?” My mom replied, “ prepare to come to America!” I was very excited, because I have never learned or experienced of what it would be like to live in a totally different country. Full of mind was thought about how the United States will look like; what is their living environment; how do education works in school.

As a teenager moving to a new country with a different culture, different language, and being thousands of miles away from everyone I grew up with was not an easy change, however, that was precisely what I did in January of 2013 when I came to the United States with my father. My whole world changed since, and shaped my way of thinking. From learning English, adjusting to a new culture, experiencing my first snow and finding my way in my new country, my life has been an exciting adventure. My parents brought me to America almost 5 years ago to have a better life, and to get a better education.

The first eight years of my life, I spent in India where I was born. Growing up I was constantly reminded by my parents that I needed to make them proud by getting a good job and living a good lifestyle. They told me this because they did not want to see me live a hard life like they did. When I was nine years old, I moved from India to the United States of America. The reason why I moved to America was not because I was living a bad life in India, it was so that I could have a better education and more opportunities in life.

Day 2 Immigrant. That word gives me a label here. I am crossing the border to the U.S because my parents think it will give us a new beginning and a better life. I think they’re wrong. Our life in El Salvador was fine: We had a nice house and we were healthy.

The American Dream My American Dream will come true because it is so easy to achieve. You want to know about it? Its really interesting and you probably can achieve it to. Its self comfort and happiness with yourself.

My identity was created when my parents wrote my name on my birth certificate in 1998. Not knowing anything, my parents decided to walk away from the Hmong tradition of giving their descendant a Hmong name and wanted to become more Americanized for the better of my future. They came to the conclusion of calling me Billy, which have no affiliation with being Hmong at all, being the first in the family to walk down this path. Being borned in the United States as the youngest child in my family and being, with my four older siblings, the first generation of Hmong-American, allows me to have a different life than I would in Laos. Since my childhood, my culture is influenced by the experiences and opportunities that had shaped me as the person

It was a warm Monday morning, I got a mail with urgent written all over it. After opening the mail I could not believe what I saw in the box. It was an acceptance letter from a university in America named Clark University. I was in high school when my father asked me to consider the option of studying in America but I did not want to leave my country for anything.