Aleka Yiorpalidis: Moving To Africa

On September 11, 2001 tragedy struck. The sky was blue and it was a beautiful morning. I was walking down the street to get some breakfast with an old friend. I opened the door to the old Copper Lantern restaurant where we were suppose to meet, and there she was. She looked so amazing it was great to finally see Amanda again! Midcoversation there was suddenly a loud boom, and the ground rumbled. Girls in the restaurant screamed, with in minutes everything was chaotic. I grab Amanda's hand a pulled her through the waves of families till we finally got to the door. I took my first steps outside and everything was in a haze.

In order to come to America Artina’s parents went to the ambassador that represent America and got a visa. She doesn’t remember much of the process besides the paperwork and the plane ride. She said it was really tiring. She feels connected to her old culture, but not

Life is unpredictable and no one could gifted with a foresight. I still remember that day when I boarded the plane, from China to America, up to eighteen hours of travel. When I step on the land of America, my life instantly changed. The exaggerated graffiti on the wall with a twisted smile looks like the one who is saying “Hi.” to me. When I go in to my “home”,mice and cockroaches are all around. The teen who stand near the door says, “Welcome to America.”

In the months, weeks, and eventually days leading up to my flight to Germany the panic was gnawing away at me. Despite the fact that this wasn’t the first time I was venturing out without my parents or even my first time on a plane, it was my first time for a myriad of other experiences in my life. My first international adventure, my first time living with a family that wasn’t my own, and my first time being surrounded by people speaking a different language; all of which began with a simple decision to cross the threshold between the jet bridge and the plane.

Stepping out of my first plane ride, I experience an epiphany of new culture, which seems to me as a whole new world. Buzzing around my ears are conversations in an unfamiliar language that intrigues me. It then struck me that after twenty hours of a seemingly perpetual plane ride that I finally arrived in The United States of America, a country full of new opportunities. It was this moment that I realized how diverse and big this world is. This is the story of my new life in America.

The description of women provided in Olaudah Equiano's and Venture Smith's narratives compared to the European's descriptions of indigenous and African women provided in Jennifer Morgan's paper are distinctive. Equiano and Smith write highly of their mothers while Europeans talk repulsively about African and indigenous women. As a reader, one can infer many opinions about each of the writer's attitudes about the expected gender norms for women at that time such as caretaking, breastfeeding or working. The European perspective utilizes their claim to authority on women through dehumanizing different races and converting them into Christians.

During that time in Liberia, there was a civil war going on causing her mother to make that decision of sending her only daughter away for a better life. Although she traveled with Pan Am, her family entrusted her to a man she didn’t know to bring to her extended family. The possessions she departed with were a suitcase some articles of African clothing and a purse. Her first twenty-four hours were scared and frightening. Once she arrived in New York, she had to take a bus to Providence, Rhode Island to meet her family. On the bus ride, in shock and terror she thought America was depressing by its appearance. Due to it being winter, she expected warm weather with blossomed flowers and

Her life there didn’t seem so great at first. After locking herself up in her room for a month, she found a way to escape her life by doing something she enjoys. She started to go grocery shopping. She volunteered to go for her parents. As it says in the story, “She loved it in the way some people have to drive long country roads because doing it she could think and relax and wander.

On the day of March 6 1979 everything seemed normal in the scenic European country called Poland. Passerbys walked along the streets, bundled up in warm clothes, birds sang their melodies, children were in school, adults were working, and children were born. One of these children, however, would go on to make a name for herself almost halfway across the world on a small and somewhat reclusive island in America.

The award-winning novelist and memoirist as well as author of Across a Hundred Mountains has written an inspiring memoir that will reach out and touch the reader's hearts. The Distance Between Us is about a four-year-old girl from Iguala, Mexico who lives in extreme poverty. Her father left to go to the US when she was two years old to earn money and build a house. Later on, when Reyna was four her mother had left to go help her father, and this left Reyna and her three siblings with their grandmother who wasn’t as pleasant as you would expect. As the story progresses forward, readers can see their living conditions how they aren't getting properly fed and some of the traumatic events that they witness such as people dying in front of them or people with rare illnesses. Soon after her mother comes back to Mexico, the children realize that their father had left her for another woman and their mother had brought back a new baby with her. After this, their father comes to Mexico, and brings Reyna and her two siblings back to the US with them. Living their lives in the US was not as easy as they thought because of the language barrier and their father drinking all day long and getting constantly abused by him almost every day. for small things. Eventually, Reyna pursues her education and finds sanctuary in reading books and writing stories. She was the first person in her family to graduate from college and pursue her dreams. Because of this, she has inspired many people around this world. Overall Reyna Grande successfully tells us about how immigration impacted her life and her family’s life using features such as the honest truth, both internal and external conflict, graphic imagery, and a sad and bittersweet tone to reflect upon all of her life experiences. Because of this, she convinces the readers about the toll immigration took on their family.

However, even with everything they built, eighteen years later, her husband was deported and now, three years later Sylvia is waiting on the response of the immigration authorities about her whereabouts. One of Sylvia’s colleagues

Jane was 13 years old when she, her mother and father first stepped foot into the United States. Jane’s family a traditional one, a mother and a father, her father a project manager for the IT Specialist at a hospital, her mother now a financial adviser, but when she first arrived at the United States, she sold tie dye tee shirt at her local beach, making roughly nothing. Jane describes her home life as a good one, they are all close

Many people interpret Africa to be a rundown third world country. When Ann Jones goes to Africa she gets to see the real beauty of the continent. Ann Jones drove through many countries and saw the many different ways each group of people interact with each other. Jones draws the conclusion that Africa has a caring community, people who will steal, and full of beautiful landscapes.

Within two years in her part time job, she managed to accumulate money to pay for a "used car" and "her own apartment" (Small 94). without this migration, she would continue to live as the "quiet and dutiful child" of Atu and Malia (Small 88). In America, she learned how to fend for herself. She did not enjoy the fact that a Tongan elderly was taking advantage of her modesty. She used to let her borrow money in which took "a year and few months" to pay back. She would buy food for herself and the lady and they would eat together. Now, they alternate in buying lunch which seemed to prove to be "more equal" (Small

My journey the day I left my home country in search of a better life was not as pleasurable or exciting as I expected. Although it was not a long flight, the accumulation of unexpected vicissitudes during the trip made my dream of traveling an absolute nightmare. Not only my sadness to be leaving my family behind, the uncertainty to fly alone and for the first time, or my inexperience with the procedures at the airport contributed to this calamity, but even my neighbor on the plane added his bit of sand in the affair. All this situation was such traumatic to me that I even considered never daring to fly again.