Personal Narrative: My Life In The United States

“Times of transition are strenuous, but I love them. They are an opportunity to purge, rethink priorities, and be intentional about new habits. We can make our new normal any way we want”. -Kristin Armstrong. When I heard this quote it reminds me of a specific time in my life when I moved to another country. There are a couple of events that helped me become who I am now.

I came to US during my 8th grade and that was a life changing moment in my life. It was first time traveling aboard and that also not for a trip but for to permanent settlement. I was nervous my whole time been in the plane that how I will cope up with new environment and with bunch of English speakers. I got more. When it came pilot call for, that it's time to land on the Detroit Airport, tighten your seatbelts and be relax. As soon as the plane landed on American soil, I knew that this was the place where I’d to start a new life. Even though I knew America is the “Land of Opportunity”, everything here seemed so strange to me, the streets, the language and the people that was my first time traveling abroad.

Hi, I’m Anna Sophia Wager and I am from Germany. I immigrated to the United States in 1908. There was a big drought and my mother and father were very ill. I was helping my parents and my other family. One day, my father pulled me aside after school. I was a teacher at Berlin British School. He talked very softly. “Anna Sophia,” My father said, “Here is a ticket to Americana. Go and find Ben.” Ben was my older brother. My parents gave him a ticket to the United States. I looked at the ticket. It was a ticket that was golden brown. I gave my father a hug and ran to my room. I started packing, I didn’t know what was ahead of me. It was finally my third week on the crowded boat. When I look own the steerage door I see the dirty faces, hard lumpy beds, and chunky slimy soup.

In 2004, My dad faced a big life decision. To move to America, the so called land of opportunities, or to stay in Poland, my whole family’s home country. Poland was changing from a communistic system, to a democracy. My father at the time was an engineer, my mother was a teacher, and we all lived in a apartment in Bialystok, an evolving city up to this day. We could afford day to day life, but the cost of living in the country during the transformation was increasing faster than one's income. We weren’t in any way suffering from poverty, but my dad knew there could be a better life for him and his family out there. He had visited the states 10 years before and thought that moving, would be a great new adventure for us as well as a challenge that he was tempted to take

I came to the United States on October 1st 2009. As an eight-year-old, I didn’t realize the changes my life was about to go through. I would always dream of coming to the united states because of the amount of opportunities that I could have here, that I could never have in El Salvador. Although, I didn’t comprehend that would mean leaving my whole family and making such a huge change in my life. Growing up in El Salvador I got used to depending on my family and having their support no matter what. After I moved the changes were really hard for me: Not having my family around, learning a new language, and getting used to a new lifestyle; took me some time to get used to.

We were able to save $3.99 every week which ended up being a total of $207.48 at the end of the year. This also meant a total of $2,074.80 of savings at the end of the decade. I managed to be able to keep my job. This was an amazing opportunity because my job was the reason I had the extra money that I did at the end of the year. Many of the others that came to America with my brother I were not having that great of a life. It seemed that their lives were not much better than the ones that they had left behind. When I asked to be able to keep my job and they said yes I thought that I was dreaming because I had so much joy. I knew America was looking better and better the longer my brother and I stood around. In order to save more money for my brother and I, we stopped buying a few of the groceries that we use to. By doing so, we saved a total of 37 cents a week which ends up being almost $20 extra at the end of the year.With the extra money, we saved a total of $2,267.20 at the end of the decade. I wanted to make sure that we could make and save enough money in order to use it in the future. We needed a backup source of money just in case one of us decided to start a family or ended up becoming very

That’s basically all I could understand as I left the immigration center. People all around me were talking in languages I had only studied in textbooks, which barely helped. That was the first time I could really look around and see where I was. The sound of car engines roared in my ears as I walked across the street; people squashed into a small bus while chattering in a garbled language that made no sense. Everywhere I looked I saw chaos, and I couldn’t have been happier.

As an international student, it is critical to consider schools which are friendly towards persons who may not share the same culture as the major population of the student body. Having lived and thrived in a culture so different from my own for sometime, I have learned that for the most part, people are a lot welcoming to my culture when I do not try to hide from it but rather, offer my different perceptions and opinions about the questions I am being asked.

My past is something i hardly talk about with my teachers but in a way it's a great for this prompt, When my mom was 16 years old it about my age today but she was pregnant with me and my twin sister. To bring me and my sister here to the united states she had to come with bad people and in that truck there was another 200 pregant people and half were just kids and those people were also coming from guatemala and going to united states. My mom was really frightened but the only thing in her mind was that she knew her twins had to be born in the U.S because in her country she knew we wouldn't have a future in her country. She had to be strong when she was in the truck because because we were ready to come out and it was 9 months already and she couldn't hold the pain anymore

Living as a white woman in the United States, people often find themselves labeling one another with identities in order to group people together. Yes, the color of my skin is white and although it would be easier to just say I am simply that, my identity goes past that. I am Greek, Armenian, and Irish and my physical features portray just that. Growing up my family had just enough money to live with luxuries and being an only child helped the money situation. However, I was not considered wealthy, but especially when applying to colleges came around last October, I finally realized what it meant to have money. I appreciated what my parents were able to do for me and I couldn't fathom what someone without money would do by not going to college. As previously mentioned, I identify as a woman, and the pronouns I go by are “she” and “her”. Having said that, I am a heterosexual and I am interested in men. However, I support anyone and everyone who would identify differently than me. As for religion, I must admit that I am not religious, and for someone attending a Franciscan school, that might sound strange, but it is true.

My Identity has changed a lot in 5 to 10 years. Just 5 years ago I did not have a son and I was single. My identity was a teenage athlete. Throughout high school, I played all types of sports. I played football, basketball, baseball and also ran track. That was my mother way of keeping me out of trouble. I was very popular in school and was able to associate with all different types of social group in school. I was also a nerd and enjoyed science. I was honor roll in all my classes and had study groups through my years in high school. I was also raised in a single parent household and was alone and lonely outside of school. My mother did not have time for me because she worked two jobs and did not associate with other family members. Fast forward

I do not really know if I returned home. The Stuttgart I came back to felt like a completely different city than the one I left. The streets are bare and the mood is reminiscent of the trenches between the bombardments and the attacks. Stuttgart was muted by the aftermath of the war. The Christmas markets that are customarily teeming with waves of people are now akin to No Man’s Land. The slight amount of citizens I do see look empty and hollow as if they just had their souls reaped by the Grim Reaper himself. None of what I thought made Stuttgart the bustling city that I loved existed. Everything was painted in the colors of war. Personally, I wished that I had not returned at all. The news that my sister Kristin had brought up on my return was devastating. My mother and my sister had died in an industrial disaster at the very factory I was working at prior to the war. The very people I had fought so hard to return to. Instead I return

Nobody likes moving at least I know I don't. We we're living in India and I was in fifth grade when we moved. We moved into our house in India when I was one year old. Was going great I had a lot of friends. My best friend was my neighbor every day after school we would go to a park in our colony.

Without my story of what you can so call my parents “journey” to the United States I would not be the individual I am today. My family sacrificed many things in order to give me a better future, but with this journey came many obstacles. Obstacles that have completely shaped my identity. I can always trace back the question of “Who am I?” with their journey to the United States.

My family finally got our chance to come to America, but unfortunately, my father and my middle brother passed away in a horrific motor accident a year before we departed Viet Nam. After two years in the United States, my family moved to “the projects” of Dayton, Ohio; however, after few days in the projects, surrounded by prostitutes and drug dealers, it was clear to me that the only way to improve our lives was through hard work and education. I started to work various jobs at a very early