My Experience In My Life

My name is Alexis Lopez Sevilla. I am 19 years old. I was born in the State of Jalisco, Mexico where I spent fourteen years of my life living there. I am the second oldest and only son of four siblings. Currently, I am living in Long Beach, California, and I am attending Long Beach City College. When I was fourteen years old, my family and I arrived in this country. Coming to the United Sates has been the most challenging experience I have had so far, especially because I did not want to move away from a place that I loved so much, that was my hometown. Therefore, the first obstacle that I experienced on this journey was not being able to accept the fact that my future was going to be established in a place that I knew so little about.

My life started like many American boy lives, easy childhood, fun adventures, and an affinity for cars. This charmed life was soon brought to a halt by the introduction to school. Previously the only social interactions were 30 minutes in the park or other gathering where my parents crossed paths with another couple with a child of similar age. This short meet and greet lead to some very weird situations, one that was most memorable encounters were with this 4-year-old, very thin girl at a library. At this particular library, there was a play structure where the parents could drop their kids so they could browse in peace. Having been dropped off, I was promptly greeted by a girl who said with a straight face, “I have a small ass which is good” which threw me off. Being 3 at the time made the situation even weirder. The other problem was at Three I was looking for the truths of the world so I accepted that a small ass was a good thing along with the other very suggestive things she said at 4-year-old. These truths stayed with me for a minimum of 3 years which includes my first year of school.

Starting in my eleventh-grade year of high school, I never knew all the changes I would experience. I attended Chickasaw High School in Chickasaw, AL. It was a little school, which had about five hundred students in total. I did not live in Chickasaw like all the other kids. I lived about twenty minutes away in Mobile, AL with my dad and stepmom. I went to this school because my stepmom (LaRae) was a teacher there. Also, I was like most girls in high school, I had a high school sweetheart named Michael Matthews. I thought my eleventh-grade year of high school was going to be a great and memorable experience until I found out some horrible news.

I grew up in a small community and grew accustomed to the people I knew. But I’ve also moved around and had to cope with the challenges of new introductions.

From my earliest memory, my life in the Philippians was surrounded with joy. I was born

On the night of April 7, 1997, my seven-year-old body flew from the backseat of a Nissan Sentra and crashed through the front passenger window onto the roadway of Old Town, Staten Island. I woke up on a hospital stretcher in pain and perplexed. My eyes were filled with shattered glass. I had no mobility in either of my arms; my right arm was wrapped in gauze and plaster; and my left arm had an IV in it. Two days later I was informed of the full extent of my injuries. I shouted at my nurse, “But how will I eat, write, shower, and how will I use the bathroom? What about my hair? How will I put on my clothes?

When my brother was 7 years old he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. This was a scary time in my life, not just because my little brother had acquired an incurable disease but because he was on the verge of death when the doctors finally prescribed him. When my brother was first brought to the hospital I feared for the worst. I remember being yanked out of soccer practice and rushed to the hospital as my sister cried at the wheel of our car. The only thing we knew for sure was that my brother was so sickly and so close to death that if he had come in to the hospital a moment later all our lives might have taken a turn for the worst. When we were finally educated on the circumstances we would have to endure in the coming years, my family and I quickly rose to the occasion and set out to learn how to conquer the foreign invader. My mother and I spent countless hours in the emergency room, working with specialists and trying to master the caretaking of a diabetic. Because my dad was busy at work and my sister busy at college, my mom had a lot on her plate and I was more than willing to do whatever I could to help her out. This involved a lot of babysitting while my mother researched and more cooking than I had ever experienced in my life. Thankfully some good did come from this experience. My brother and I spent so much time together that year that we became inseparable, only able to spend short amounts of time away from each other. And to top it off, possibly the

I remember my parents calling me up an hour before midnight telling me that they would be coming home late from work. That was how I grew up my entire life until I entered high school. As an immigrant family, my parents had to run the extra mile to provide for our family. I was the oldest of my family. Therefore, I had to step up as the mother figure and to take care of my younger brother. Sometimes, my friends would ask me to hang out with them or to come over my house. My answer was no most of the time. I had a younger brother in the house who needed my help with his homework. He couldn’t feed himself so I had to feed him. I remember putting him to sleep one night and just asking myself why I had to do this. I wanted to hang out with my friends and act like a child that I was. I was an eleven-year-old who had to grow up because of the circumstances. And I did not like that. As time passed by, my parents were settling in to this new surrounding and they began to take some of their time off from work to spend time with me and my brother. Even then, there were times where I had to take care of my brother because he couldn’t be home alone.

Hope Rebecca Davis, a little formal don’t you think? You’d think that my parents thought I was going to be the hope of the world or something of that sort, but that is the farthest from the truth. I was named Hope just because my mom thought that Hope was a “pretty” name. As you know that was probably a bit disappointing for me, but my name represents a great deal to me. Hope means to have a feeling of expectation or desire for a certain thing to happen… then I considered the following, I can be the person in the world that makes these things happen. I can be the change in this unfluctuating society. I can be the person I want to be when I grow older, I just don’t know what I desire to do yet. But experiences in my life such as these are going to guide me to where I need to be.

As I'm writing this, we have just returned from a 5 day hospital stay. Life has become a series of doctors' appointments, tests, and hospital stays. This is life with a chronic illness. . . especially one of which not much is known. But life wasn't always this way.

As an artist would create a new piece, multiple events have shaped me into the person I am today. My life is a mixture of inspirational highs and heavy lows. However, despite my misfortunes and amidst my revelations, one moment of immense personal growth stands above them all - and in fact, it wasn’t a moment, it was a process. My grandmother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s when I was eight, and since I was in middle school, lived with my family and I. She passed away last March, and through her memory loss she reminded me to cherish life and work hard; in dying, she reminded me to live.

I don't consider myself a Good Samaritan or even a role model but I do take 5 day out of my life in a whole year to help kids with many types of disabilities including my little sister. Every year I volunteer at Kamp Dovetail in June, we sleep in a tent every night outside in the blistering heat and unpredictable weather. Every day we get up at 7 am and start our day off with breakfast, which many different sponsor donate, we then proceed to group time where we talk about our fun filled activities for the day. Some of the activities include arts and crafts, fishing, boating, horseback riding, recreation, bouncy house, mini golfing, and the most popular of all swimming. For many kids this week is the only week that they can experience some of these activities because not all of the children have excellent home lives so we all strive to make this the best week that they'll always remember and want to return next year. Even though we try to do our best to control every situation to have the best possible outcome, we can't control the weather. I have been volunteering for five years and every year we would have to evacuate to the nearest school because of a huge thunderstorm that would flood the whole camp site. Normally we can watch the radar and pack up before the storm hits however, one year that wasn't the case.

I woke up at 6:00 am on October 17th, a Tuesday and two days before MEA. I followed my morning routine by turning on my tv in my bedroom to watch Seinfeld as I did my make up and straightened my hair. I check the forecast on my phone, sunny and a little breezy with a high of 76 degrees, perfect weather. I picked out my new blue Briar Cliff University sweatshirt and my red low rise converse and started gathering some lemonade cans. My mom had bought a twelve pack of lemonade that was too sugary and she had instructed me to give it out to my classmates. Before running out the door I grabbed two Great Value brand waffles, which are just yellow knock offs of Eggo Waffles. I usually showed up at school around 7:10am to ask for help and work on homework.

I was 16 when it happened. It was a surprisingly warm December day in 1994 in Bangladesh. It was already past dinnertime. My dad ran a little bit late from work, since so many people were out enjoying the nice weather. My dad owned a tailoring shop downtown, and it was always pretty busy, since most Bengali stores at the time didn’t sell stitched clothes. My mom and my three siblings went ahead and ate, but I waited for Dad to come home. We always ate dinner together, no matter how late he came back. When he finally came back, it was almost 9:00, so we decided that we were going to eat dinner while watching TV. We watched Looney Toons together. I asked him if he had any wacky customers at the shop. He jokingly tried to convince me to switch from pursuing biology to English. It was running gag between us. Anyone who knew me knew I sucked at English. After he finished eating, he got up to take his plate to the kitchen. I was finishing up my food when I heard a crash come from the kitchen. I ran to the kitchen and I saw my dad collapsed on the floor. I yelled for my mom. We quickly rushed him to the hospital. The quickest way to the hospital was by rickshaw. My mom, my brother, and I kept yelling at the rider to go faster. We finally got to the hospital only to realize that he was gone. He had died of an ischemic stroke on the way there.

Through my entire life, I have been through difficult times that made me reflected on it and depressed. Situations that make your days hard and always they have a big impact on your life. Probably never forget them. I was not born in this country, I have over three years living in Hollister. During the first two years, my life was not easy, especially the first year in town. I was born in Guatemala, a country in Central America. That’s where my life began. Been in a different country is hard, learn its language is difficult, its culture and try to belong to it.