Arriving to the Land of Opportunities

            The most transformative period of my life was when I left my native country, the Dominican Republic to come to America. I did not realize it at the time, though, and still remember the first months that I spent crying over all the things I had left behind. During that period of my life, I wondered what the future would hold for me and my family. I had to arrive and live together with a family that I hardly knew, while dealing with overwhelming desperation and longing for the past. I have always been proud of my Hispanic heritage and my roots. My family has never been rich, and has often struggled to survive in society. I was raised by my grandparents and when I was young, they told me that the most important responsibility I would ever have would be getting an education. They felt that this would ensure that the things they had been through might not happen to me.
             However, this was not what was on my mind when I first heard news of my trip to the United States. I was excited to come to a new country and to a new family. In particular, this would mark the first time in my life that I would be living full-time with my mother, who I had only seen for short periods of time during her visits when I was young. At first, I was very happy to be making the move, but soon, reality started setting in. I was a young man with ambition and desire to prosper in my studies, but I was facing the fact that I spoke almost no English and was living like a stranger in an unknown place. I began to feel homesick and miss the familiarity of my old life in the Dominican Republic. It was difficult to open up to my family, and I felt as though I had no one to talk to. I remember crying at night before bed, crying for the past and future I left behind. My mother and stepfather saw my grief but they kept telling me to give it time and that in the end, I would have a much brighter future in the US. .
             As time passed, I began to learn the language more and more each day at school, and was able to establish relationships with my classmates, many of whom shared my background.