Welcome To USA

I was born and raised in Cameroon, a country in West Africa. My parents and culture in which I grew up have been very relevant in shaping who I am today. I was attracted to America first because of freedom and opportunity which are lacking in my native country. Secondly, America is a country of multicultural diversity. This makes it a home to millions of people from around the world who want to experience the American Dream. Whether this is possible or not, the answer depends on individual cases and the choices they make after arriving in America. For the past ten years, I have been living here. I have realized that America exhibits a very influential popular culture including entertainment, fashion, and food. This culture affects everyone in the society in one way or the other, but strongly reflects the values of teenagers and young adults. My American experience has been that of mixed blessings including the immigration issues, assimilation, maintaining a family unit as well as the benefits of opportunities for a career and freedom of speech.

I awkwardly made my way to the lunch line, and stood for what seemed like an eternity. Being the nervous and shy person that I am, I constantly thought that eyes were watching me. As I picked up my lunch tray, I heard a voice behind me say, “Hey you!” I eagerly turned around. I thought to myself that maybe it’s a new friend! I was so elated with the fact that finally, someone wanted to talk to me! As the lunch line proceeded, I was getting hammered with questions: “Where are you from? Why are you here? What is your name?” Feeling a little overwhelmed, I answered the boy quickly as I got my lunch food. As we both exited the line, I thought I had obtained a new friend. I soon found out that I was wrong. With a slanderous tone, the boy said, “Just to let you know, I’m going to make fun of you for the rest of the year.” Then he strutted off into his group of friends and walked away. With broken hope, I scanned the cafeteria for an empty seat. I found one at the end of a deserted table, sat quietly again, and pondered on what the boy had said to me, and then I watched. I wondered to myself, what would my father have done in a situation like this?

After so many incidents, I was determined to learn this foreign language and prove to people that I wasn’t not lost in this country. Every day afterschool I would ask my family to help me with my English. One year later, I was able to understand what people around me were saying, and I could do basic communications with people. School came to me as an enjoying part of my day, something I looked forward to when going to bed, and an opportunity, a gift for me to learn the language of this new country.

“Me... Fahima Chowdhury. . . hmmm... I … speak…hmm… little English.” I recall these first few words I said on my first day of school here while I walk up to the stage to receive the award of “most improved and exceptionally achieved student.” It was a moment of accomplishment for me. My legs and hands were shaking, my voice was trembling, and my heart was dribbling like a basketball as I tried to walk to the stage at a steady speed. When I finally reached there, my teacher gave me a wide smile and handed me the certificate and said, “Good job, you deserve this more than anyone else.” After hearing her comment, my heart was beating faster, my respiratory system searched for fresh air to breath in, and my eyes looked for a place to hide because I couldn’t believe in what was happening. I never thought I would receive such honor after being doubted by many people about my abilities to do well in school. Finally, I gathered some courage and said, “Thank you.” I rushed down the stairs and got to my seat within few seconds. I was breathing unevenly,

I moved to Tennessee when I was ten years old. I left my home, school, family, and friends due to my mom’s marriage to my stepfather who lived in a different country; although they were together for five years, I never expected to move so far away from everything I had ever known and grown to love. I attended Smyrna middle school that year and no longer had friends, my new “home” didn’t feel like home to me and the rest of my family now lived 12 hours away by plane. I couldn’t speak English and was instantly placed in an ESL classroom. To my luck, my teacher was very passionate about his job. He could speak eight languages, one of them happened to be Portuguese. He was thrilled about having me in his classroom,

But my mom and aunt assured me that everything will be fine and that kids here are very kind and friendly. Though I wanted to run back to my mom and go home with her, I decided against it and followed the counselor to Ms. Algers’ fourth grade classroom. As soon as I walked in, Ms. Algers’ introduced me to the whole class, and my soon-to-be classmates greeted me with a nod, smile, or “hello’s”. Though everyone was warm, there was this one girl who went above and beyond to make me feel welcomed, her name was Emma. She had blonde hair with glistening blue eyes, loved to play soccer, participated in student body activities, and wore abundant pastel colored shirts. She had prepared a welcome card and a pencil for me on my first day of school. She even introduced me to her friends, showed me around the classroom, sat with me during lunch, and played with me during recess. Her kindness made me feel like I belonged there and helped me get over my fears in a short amount of

As we turned the corner of 1700 W. Thompson street I see many kids outside on the wall. My mom stopped the car in front of the main entrance and said “ see you later”. Since this year was my first year of Gesu I didn't know where to go. I was just standing there watching the pre-k and kindergarten classes go into the door. Finally I see my cousin in a line and went her direction. She told me to get in line behind her cause I was in her class. We went up stairs and met our teacher . Everything got situated so our teacher asks us to pull out our reading books and a pen to copy what's on the board. It was a prayer. I began writing then she said “ Cursive!!! Write in Cursive!”. I'm just thinking to myself about how I can't write in cursive so I just write in print.

     Once my family and I arrived at our new house I was still very saddened because of the move and had trouble not getting mad at my parents. Summer went bye like it wasn’t even there and by the time school started I was very depressed. The new school I was going to was Naperville North High School which was about ten times the size of my old school in Pennsylvania in size and in the number of students. In my school in Pennsylvania there were about twelve students in each class, here the number runs around thirty two. The school building was so big I had a lot of trouble getting to class on time let alone finding them in the building. The school wasn’t what I was bothered by the most because it was the fact that I didn’t have any social life and I was a social person. There were a lot of different groups of people at my new high school, it was tough for me to fit in and meet new people. Everyone just knew me as the new kid and didn’t even bother to find out what my real name was. The first

My first day of school felt so strange as if I was banished to Mars. Or at least to some very far away place full of strangers where nobody speaks my language. Because indeed, nobody spoke my language on my first day of school. I was 6 years old and lost among people whom I couldn’t even talk to. How could this happen? I spent all of my childhood in Hungary, but it still felt like we just moved to another country right before me starting school. Although no such thing happened, I still blame everything on my parents.

When I was ten years old, my mother moved to New York for a new job. My life as I know it changed forever the day I landed at JFK. I still remember my first day of school, a dozen of eyes peered up at me and I have never felt more like an animal at a zoo. The extent of my vocabulary back then didn’t extend much beyond hello and goodbye. At school, I felt like I was watching a silent movie, I can see my classmates talking, but their words sounded like nothing more than white noises to me. I had never felt so helpless and alienated. All I wanted was to go back to the life that I once knew. With that out of the question, I was determined to be fluent in English. In my spare time, I would watch everything from cartoons to news programs on TV,

The petrifying feeling of being lost in a crowd of strangers, unable to communicate with anyone, is something I remember vividly. It was in the colorful kindergarten classroom of my first day at an American school that I realized I can’t live by only relying on the people closest to me. My parents didn’t prepare me for what should have been the easiest day of the school year. When the teacher assigned us a peer activity where each and every one of us needed to introduce ourselves, I immediately froze. I couldn’t speak an ounce of English during that time; even saying my name in English was too difficult for me. My classmates asked me simple questions like “Where are you from?” or “What’s your name?” However, I wasn’t able to answer them because I either couldn’t understand the questions or I didn’t know how to form a good response. After that experience, I knew that I have to improve myself and actively learn new things even without the help of my parents. Fortunately, by my second year of school, I had

Early in the morning of the new world began. I got ready and walked to school. Now as an innocent tiny being that I was at the time, I saw many different buildings, humongous teachers, and kids my age that seems to have different skin color as I did. One of the teachers noticed me, and started talking in English. “No English… No English” is what I had learned from my parents in this type of situation. The teacher took my hand and guided me to the main office. They were asking for my name. I had spelled my name on a slip of paper and gave the slip to them. Coincidently, the teacher that walked with me was my class teacher. I walked to my class with her, my jaw opened to all the new distinct objects I had ever seen. She introduced me to the class and used the slip of paper that I wrote my name on and I stuttered timidly “ No… English…n ..n .. nice to me..meet you” , and the class had started. I was going through class everyday clueless to what the teacher was saying, the activities we did required me to show my body language to them just like the old cave man days. My teacher Ms. Wilkins taught me the English language carefully step by step every recess time during the day starting with pronunciation, grammar, and sentence structure. I would have stack of packets full of homework progressing on my learning with three times more work than my classmates. I had to work harder in order to survive, I felt anxious to surpass the majority or at least be equal

At five years old, leaving behind my parents and my whole life back in America was quite a scary experience for me. My mom later told me that as she dropped me off at school, I stood at the school gate, I looked emotionally bewildered as I waved goodbye. I was led away from the gate by my Didi, the caretaker of me and five other girls in one dorm room. Being shy at the time, I let my Didi introduce me to the other girls in the room. Most of the girls knew few words in English, but they all spoke Gujarati, which was foreign to me. I did not want to be the “new girl” that no one talked to because I was different than everyone else. I soon learned that the girls in my room were also feeling the same way I felt about entering a boarding school. I learned that they were

I was an undergraduate student in Arkansas State University, AR, Jonesboro. We have finished our fall semester. The final exam was over and results were also published out. Every one of our class has passed in the exam. Mostly I used to hang out with my friends. They were the most important people as I was there as a international student. Getting chance to meet some people from your own country was a privilege to me itself. We were having a break time after the exam was accomplished .We have been practicing to visit lakes and some restaurant in the downtown area. Public transports were so poor and we have to walk to go to the university. It was the December 19, we were nine students from Nepal and we had planned to transfer to community college of

I was deeply focused on my classwork when my fourth-grade teacher pulled me aside from the class and told me that I needed to go to the principal’s office because my mom was going to pick me. Naturally, I was filled with joy because I was going to leave school early, but a question popped into mind. Why did I need to go to the principal’s office? I disregarded the thought and packed up my things. I slowly walked to principal’s office with my head down and thoughts rushing through my mind. What had happened? Is everything all right? Yet, the questions did not help the situations, for none of my questions were going to get answered any time soon. Once I finally put my head up, I had arrived. I gradually reached for the door in fear of what was to come. I opened the door to find the exact picture I was hoping not to see. My sister was sobbing while my mom was shouting in rapid Spanish.