While I was growing up, I had become acclimated to moving around. I constantly moved in and out of houses, sometimes to a new city while other times to a completely different country. When I was a year old, I had departed from Miami en route to Barranquilla, Colombia where I spent four years with my grandfather. My grandfather would always reassure me with an Arabic proverb “Continuing in the same state is impossible” meaning that all change is always beneficial in spite of its guise. At the time, I was too young and naïve to understand his perspective. But now, after he has passed away, I have begun to truly grasp the meaning behind the words he spoke to me.
By the time my fifth birthday came around, I was on yet another lonely plane soaring through the hazy sky passing through cloud after cloud, waiting apprehensively to see my mother after spending two years apart. I quickly grew fond of my alleged “new home” in Puerto Rico, but like clockwork, in a year I reverted back to my former nomadic lifestyle. This time, I returned to South Florida and embarked on a city hopping debacle; u...
Imagine having to leave your hometown, where you have lived all of your life, in search of another job. You do not want to move, but at the same time you want to provide food and a decent lifestyle for you and your family. News arrives that an abundance of jobs are available in another part of the country. Hoping for the best, you pack your bags and head for employment. Your kids are saddened about the situation, but they understand the need for relocation. During the travel to the new area, you and your family begin to get excited about living in a different place, even though everyone regrets leaving friends and family behind.
Life is full of experiences and exploration. In life everyone have something that has changed the way they recognize things. Most things change a person’s perception because of the experience they had in the past. I never imagined that my life would ever change. Being born in a different country and end up in a different place could be very hard and frustrating.
“I still remember the day we left like it was yesterday I will never forget pulling away and looking back at my childhood home. I will also never forget that my best childhood friend was not home the day we left so I never got to say goodbye. I remember thinking I was kind of glad that we didn't say goodbye because I didn't want our friendship to end.” This was the experience Carmie Trayer, now forty-one living in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania felt when she moved from Ohio to Pennsylvania.
Envision your family, compelled to escape your nation out of dread for your freedom and life. At the same time, you abandon all belongings, and experience serious emotional issues and you maybe have to separate from your family. In the midst of it all you finally at last settle down in another area, you battle to coordinate into another nation, confronting communication obstructions and an insufficient comprehension of the new nation's way of life and traditions. While a large portion of us and our families are sufficiently fortunate to go to rest every night not stressing over roughness or mistreatment, a few of us are most certainly not.
... and I started to realize some of the good effects that moving has had. I now understand that this experience has changed me in positive ways as well. Soon I would have friends in different places in the world that I can visit. I would have many places where I could go and feel like home. Most importantly, I would learn that one can adapt to every town and its people and that friends can be made everywhere. Every place has its conveniences and its problems. Every town has its generous and heartless citizens.
Prior to departure, because fellow classmates attempted to convince me not to move to the United States, for they had met people that had struggled with the transition to another country’s educational system, the idea of moving ignited a fear within me. However,
Miriam Adney once stated, “You will never be completely at home again because part of your heart will always be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”
Just like my mother had said, starting over was not an easy task, the first few months were not easy, I felt extreme homesickness, I was experiencing for the first time being almost fully independent, and I had to learn how to solve problems on my own, for example commuting in a unfamiliar city. However, there was not a second when I regretted this experience, on the contrary, this opened my appetite to more traveling, due to the fact that I meet so much new people, saw that there was more to life, than what I was used to seeing every day, and most importantly I learned about myself. I firmly believe that in order to fully know yourself, you need to experience different cultures. For example, In Washington due to the cold weather, I had no other option but to stay in doors, as a result, I discovered my passion for painting, something I otherwise would had not learned about myself if I stayed in Mexico. Not only this but making art helped me during the hardest periods of my life; it helped me understand that I could transform whatever bad thing was happening, in to something beautiful.
It was a beautiful, sunny day in South Florida. I was six years old, playing by the pool with my new puppy. I loved swimming in the pool almost every day after school. I also enjoyed going out on our boat after school or crossing the street and going to the beach. My father came home one evening with some interesting news. Now, I do not remember exactly how I felt about the news at that time, but it seemed like I did not mind that much. He had announced that we were going to move back to my birth country, Belgium. I had been living in Florida for five years and it was basically all I had known so I did not know what to expect. I had to live with my mom at first, and then my sister would join us after she graduated high school and my father finished settling things. I remember most of my earlier childhood by watching some old videos of me playing by the pool and dancing in the living room. It seemed like life could not get any better. However, I was excited and impatient to experience a new lifestyle. I realized that I could start a whole new life, make new friends and learn a new language. Belgium was not as sunny as South Florida but it has much better food and family oriented activities. Geographic mobility can have many positive effects on younger children, such as learning new languages, being more outgoing, and more family oriented; therefore, parents should not be afraid to move around and experience new cultures.
Sojourners commonly prepare to deal with adjustment difficulties in a host country, but they are unaware to face difficulties in adjusting into a familiar environment when returning home (p. 342).
According to Witkavitch (2010) life is about change and as human beings we’re always changing, growing, transforming and transitioning our lives. Our whole life is made up of change. It is relative to time and a natural component of our everyday life. Things change, they grow, they develop, they die, and something else shows up. There are many changes that can occur during a person’s lifetime. For instance, we all were once kids who changed into adults. With that said, as we age, dreams change. There will always be something new in life and we can’t expect everything to fall in place as we wish because the future is constantly changing. In the age of globalization, information and communication revolution changes are affecting our lifestyles, our ways of thinking, feelings and the way we act. Life changes everyday for a person in some way. Just like we expect the seasons to change and children to grow older. Some changes are very small and can affect your life in an enormous way. However, other events can be very important and could change your whole life such as getting married, getting arrested, having a baby, and even losing a close friend or relative. The important events that altered my life are coming the United States, playing club soccer, becoming a U.S. citizen, going to graduate school and studying abroad. In this in paper, I will discuss how these phases transformed my life physically and mentally.
The fleeting changes that often accompany seasonal transition are especially exasperated in a child’s mind, most notably when the cool crisp winds of fall signal the summer’s end approaching. The lazy routine I had adopted over several months spent frolicking in the cool blue chlorine soaked waters of my family’s bungalow colony pool gave way to changes far beyond the weather and textbooks. As the surrounding foliage changed in anticipation of colder months, so did my family. My mother’s stomach grew larger as she approached the final days of her pregnancy and in the closing hours of my eight’ summer my mother gently awoke me from the uncomfortable sleep of a long car ride to inform of a wonderful surprise. No longer would we be returning to the four-story walk up I inhabited for the majority of my young life. Instead of the pavement surrounding my former building, the final turn of our seemingly endless journey revealed the sprawling grass expanse of a baseball field directly across from an unfamiliar driveway sloping in front of the red brick walls that eventually came to be know as home.
... in the new environment and fully embrace the socio-economic and political aspects of the new environment. Nevertheless, this paper has refuted the fact that one may completely forget the social conditions of their home country by permanently living in another country. In conclusion, living in another country involves change. However, the change is never permanent and is only oriented towards the interest that made one move into another country.
I recalled this a few days ago and it amazed me how much I have changed in the last year. In the summer before tenth grade, I moved to Belgium for eighteen months. During the time I stayed there, I adapted to the 'Belgian' way of life - speaking (rudimentary) French, sampling escargot and endives, and learning my way around the complicated maze that they call streets. However, I am such a typical 'American' now that sometimes I feel like I never even left the States. Instead of spending my Friday nights playing snooker in a smoky cafŽ in Waterloo, I might go to Applebee's and a football game with my friends. It seems so strange that my life could change so much in such a short time. I find myself missing little things that I took for granted while living overseas - fresh bread, dogs sitting with their owners in restaurants, and passing international landmarks on the way to school. It's not to say that I don't like my new way of life, but just recently I have realized how much I have changed. When I lived in Belgium, I would dread another trip with visitors of the family to the Grand Place. Now, I would love to see the Mannequin de Pis in downtown Brussels. I don't know when this transformation took place because I didn't even realize that it was happening. The funny thing was that while I lived in Belgium, my friends and I would always lament on how much we craved Reese's, Butterfingers, marshmallows and real peanut butter. We would talk about how much we missed our friends, malls, and movies without subtitles.
In my life, I have been exposed to a challenge called change. Change can occur in many different ways and is dealt with in many different ways. I have come to the awareness that change can be the deepest of all things. I always thought that change occurred when you moved to a state or when you lost someone real close to you. Those are a challenge to change, yes, but change doesn’t have to occur over a climactic incident. It can just appear overnight when your brain winds up when it’s time to do something different. Even with friends that you used to have and know that move on. For example, most of my friends from elementary school, I don’t even talk to them anymore.