Personal Narrative: My Story Of Ecuador

The first time I met my little brother I was five years old sitting on a bed in Guatemala. My family decided that we wanted to add a new edition. When he was in Guatemala he was named Juan Carlos. We had to take two trips to Guatemala, one to visit my brother and one to then take him home. There was a long amount of time in between these trips. Once enough of the paperwork was done we were able to visit my baby brother.

After their major life changes, both my mom and Buck weren’t used to the new ways of life. For example, during Buck’s times of being a sled dog, Buck struggled to fight off bigger dogs and get used to sleeping out in the wild. My mother on the other hand, found it very hard to fit in all of her studying into her daily schedule. For my mom and buck to get familiar with their new way of life, they had to adapt and learn ways to facilitate life. Another struggle Buck and Rebecca faced was that they had to look after and care for their loved ones. Along Buck’s journey, he met a great new owner named John Thornton. who held Buck back from joining the wild. My mom had to multi-task by caring for her young kid and doing school work which made it harder to do the things she wanted to do. My mother Rebecca and buck both found it hard to do the things they wanted because of the love for someone. Buck and My mom thought of their new situations as challenging for various

The classic saying, “There’s always someone who has it worse than you” (Shaggy- Keepin’ it Real), didn’t come true to me until I had first-hand experience. As a child, I grew up in the lower middle class. So I wasn’t rich nor super poor. My mother came to the United States from El Salvador in the 1980’s. She has never taken my brother and me to her home country.

Would you say that life has any sense? Or Is there an answer for everything in life? Three years ago I was completely messed up about this. Gustavo Adolfo Parra Chassaigne that’s how my parents called me and I was born in Maracay a little city next to Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. I used to be the first student of all my high school, also one of the first in tennis of my state and everybody said that my family was “perfect”. So, What did happen to me?

It's significant to me because when I went with my family to Cartagena, I was 7 years old. it was the first time I was going on a trip outside of the United States. when we got to Cartagena I was amazed by how beautiful everything is, and I was shocked with how different it was from back home. The differences I saw sparked a curiosity in me, that I never knew existed. from that moment I fell in love with learning about different places around the world and the culture that comes with that place. the trip to Cartagena was also the first time I got to see some of my family members. I have always lived in Florida and only knew about the family members I had in South America through what my parents would say about them. When we arrived to South

This paper is about the time I went to the Dominican Republic and Nassau, Bahamas with my family and the wonderful lessons I learned or thought about even more. I learned a lot when I was in those two places because there were a lot of examples of the lessons I learned. Both places are very large and there are multiple people who show the lessons in their everyday life.

In June of 2016, I got a summer job working for Jeffco Open Space.I wasn’t excited but I wanted to go on a trip to the Dominican Republic. I needed to save roughly $3,000. I was gonna be working on trails all day in the summer heat and I required to have at least one 32 ounce water bottle. I went online and purchased my first Nalgene bottle off of Amazon, I think it was around $15 with shipping and handling. It came in the mail and it was about three weeks before my job started and I loved it! It’s pink with a silver-grey lip. At first, I didn’t decorate it with stickers but in July I went to Pride Festival and got my first sticker. Its circle, it has this rainbow background, and in block print it says PRIDE. Then I eventually added my

My whole family and I were devastated by the sudden death of my uncle Ryan. He had been sick with what we had thought was the flu, but later realized that it was pneumonia. I believe that we learned so much from this experience and were able to come closer as a family. As a result of my uncle’s death, my whole family decided to take a get-a-way trip to the Dominican Republic during his birthday and Christmas. While I was there I learned a very important lesson; I am blessed to live in the United States.

She grasped my hand to release my mind from the trance. I stroked my fingertips over the wrinkles that adorned my mother’s weathered hands: the past few months had aged her greatly.

I was born in Medellin, Colombia in 1984, in a loving and unconventional family. After my mother, Gloria, was discharged from the hospital, we went to live with my grandparents, Alicia and Arturo, and my uncles, Luis Carlos, the eternal bachelor of the family, and Gustavo, the divorced one. Shortly after my birth, my mother sealed my fate, when she decided to leave for the United States, as had most of the family. In particular, my Grandmother Alicia’s sisters and their daughters, my mother’s cousins, who had immigrated years before to the city of New Jersey, in search of a better life. Truthfully, my mother did not need to leave Medellin. She had an exceptional job in the same company that my grandfather worked as a CPA and was well off in life. When my mother left for New Jersey, I stayed behind with my grandparents and uncles, who raised me with love, but knowing that at any moment I will too, depart. Years passed and as with everything, life goes on. I had a typical life of a Colombian girl and spoke with my mother regularly. On those calls, she reminded me that one day I was to go to New Jersey. At the end of the eighties, my mother asked my father a signed permission to leave the

My earliest childhood memories of being read to was when I was 4 years old by my grandfather. This was back in Venezuela where I’m from. He used to read to me in Spanish, the news paper because he said we need to be informed of what was going on in the world and it was always the first thing he could find early in the morning to read and he always read while having breakfast. This are positive memories for me because they are the few memories I could remember about him. When I turned 5 years old , my mother and I came to live to united stated and didnt returned until I was 18 years old. He passed way back in 2002 and I didn’t get the chance to hug, kiss or say goodbye. Every time I pick up a news paper

My mother would start the mornings with a “Levantese que hay mucho que hacer”, in translation, “Wake up there is so much to do today”. Every day, the wakeup call was at 5:30 in the morning and it started with a list of chores. Occasionally, we would sleep until 7:30 in the morning on the weekends to more chores and whatever else was on the list. My mother was regimental and the “A” typical Latina mother, very old school. Not a day went by where my brother and me didn’t do chores and helped around the house. Lord forbit that she would have to repeat herself twice on our individual chores. She constantly reminded me that one day I would become a wife and would have to know how to take care of my family, “A man does not like a lazy wife and you would want to stay married to the same man you have exchanged vowels with”, she would say. Seeing that she was remarried two times already, I did not understand why she would expect it from me. None -the-less, I did what I was told and without any galivanting I accomplished every task assigned to me.

The plane touched down in Quito, the capital of Ecuador. Headaches and nausea had washed over me shortly after I departed from the pressurized cabin of the plane. Almost frantically, I searched for somewhere I could sit before the dizziness set in. Much of Ecuador is far, far above sea level, and because of this, my heart is not able to pump enough blood to my brain. Hence, the migraines and nausea. I was in the newly made Quito Airport for a transfer flight home, a whole week sooner than planned. I had been staying with my grandfather who lives in Ecuador, for two weeks. Most of that time was spent inside, since exertion dramatically increased the dangers of altitude sickness, which is what plagued me.

I see myself in my parents arms as a baby. I gaze up into their joyous eyes. Then I scream and scream for milk. The joyous look is gone and they look tired and sleep deprived. I cry and cry until I get my milk. Right as the bottle enters my mouth, the vision fades away.

She had little schooling, but she had run businesses. She had managed on her own, with a husband and sons, in a country that didn’t care for her or her culture, but only for their aggrandized version of it. Her experiences were rightful cause to be jaded and hard, and yet she saw brightness and she saw brightness in me. She saw the great things in life, she loved hard and appreciated the little things — us going for a walk together or just sitting in the sun on a warm day.