Personal Narrative Essay: An Unexpected Journey

An unexpected journey

One evening my father came home with multiple forms that needed to be filled out. One was for my mother and the second one was for my father to complete. He put the forms in the living room table and said “I have good news!”My dad’s face lit up like christmas tree, his smile was ear to ears, his face was glowing with happiness and we all gathered together to hear his good news. My mother on the other hand was not that impressed, “What did you buy this time?”, she asked my father. My father had replied “This is something that will make all of us have the opportunity to succeed.” My mother was busy going back in forth to the kitchen and living room. We all gathered around my father, I was eager to hear the good the news. My four year old brother jumped up and down calling “aboy” (father) as we persuaded him to tell us about the good news. My father asked if we could

My parents speak the language; I also speak some and understand a lot but the rest of my siblings had a hard time to speak the language. The culture was similar to our country. We had to learn everything quickly and in less than 2 month I spoke Amharic fluently. During the times we stayed, my parent did a lot of preparation going back and forth to government office to get everything done to our final journey.

There was a lot of corruption going on during that time. It was supposed to be easy to get everything done. However the person who worked in the office was not following the rules. It became who you know and how much money you are giving them under the table to help you. My parents didn’t have money to bribe anyone. They only had the money they borrowed and did not have any to spare. It made it a very difficult to process as they kept telling my parent you need to go back to Eritrea to get more papers while everything was