Personal Narrative: Moving To America

When I was assigned to write a paper about a moment, event, or even person, in my life that altered its course forever, ideas started to instantly pop into my head. The divorce of my parents, graduating high school, moving away and going to college; the choices were abundant. However, after giving it some further thought I realized that all of these other impactful moments in my life were in some way connected to, and to a certain extent even caused by, when I moved to America from Guatemala.
The year was 2005, I was 8 years old, and I had just started my fourth month of third grade. I hadn’t seen my father in a couple of months and, though I constantly asked my mother, I couldn’t for the life of me remember where it was that he had gone to. The only thing that I remember of what my mother said to me when I asked her his whereabouts was that it was, “un lugar muy diferente” (this translates into, “a very different place.”) One day she told me that I was finally going to get to see my father again and I got very excited. There was one catch though, he was not coming back, it was instead we who had to move to where he

was.
She tried to convince me time and time again that this different place was going to be better for us but my ignorant, obstinate, eight-year-old self refused to believe her. I argued with her, trying to get her to see things from my point of view, that I did not want different. I wanted things to stay exactly how they were: living in the same house, attending the same school, and hanging out with the same friends. How could things possibly be better I would ask her and she would always reply, “you are too young to understand this now but when you are older you will understand what I am talking about and why we (my parents) are doing what we are doing.” As we will eventually discuss, I did ultimately grow to understand what my mom was talking about, and that is the whole point of this paper, but at that time eight year old me was not happy at all. Regardless, I had to pack my bags and say goodbye to the only home I had ever known. I was not just moving schools or cities, I was moving countries.
I still remember my first impression of Las Vegas. From the moment I stepped off the plane everything was… different. It seemed to be a reoccurring situation that everything was different in mainly two aspects: its size and its quality. The airport was huge and very well taken care of. Compared to the airport in Guatemala it was well lit, didn’t have any paint chipping of the walls, and best of all not a single leaky roof that I knew of. Everything inside of the airport was bigger than in Guatemala too. The lights, the soda cups from the restaurants the televisions, the ads and billboards, the people, etc. Even my dad was bigger than he was in Guatemala.
That night was the happiest I had ever seen my dad. He was waiting for us by the baggage claim, khakis on, a white long sleeve button shirt tucked into them, a brown belt at his waist, brown shoes to match, and a tan leather colored blazer with the aforementioned belly (which was now bigger) poking out of it. As soon as he saw us from a distance he grinned, his cheek bones pushing up on his eyes, bringing out those pronounced wrinkles that extended from their corners. But when we hugged him, that is when I noticed how truly happy he was. It was not like the smiles I was used to seeing from people when they finally got to see someone they hadn’t seen in a while. No, this one had more meaning to it, conveyed a more significant message, expressed a more profound level of utter elation that I had never remembered seeing from my father before. At that time I didn’t understand what he was so happy about. I mean sure we had not seen each other in a while and I was extremely happy to see him too, but when we hugged him he even started tearing up, something my father never did. Looking back at it now though, I understand what those tears represented. They represented how much better he wanted for us than what he had. They represented the better childhood he wanted to us to have as well as the brighter future we were to attain. They represented the sacrificing of his own happiness so that we may better off. They represented love.
I asked many questions during the car ride home that day.
“Why are there so many lights, are they having a parade or something? Why are the buildings so tall? Why are there so many? Why is this city so large? Why are there so many roads? Why are the roads so wide? What do the red yellow and green lights mean? Where are all the trees? Why are the mountains so brown? Is this really where we’ll be living? This is so nice, it must have cost a lot of money.”
This place was indeed “muy diferente.”
But these were only surface differences. The real differences, the ones that mattered, I found in how differently people acted and lived their lives, and ultimately how differently I was going to be living my own. The most impactful difference I ever came across however was the one I found in the education system.
Up until that point I had never struggled in school. It had always easily gotten good grades and I never expected this to change, but now I was faced with the arduous task of trying to keep up with my grades whilst simultaneously juggling the task of trying to learn the language. Many times I thought about giving up and just quitting, and what surprised me was that I wasn’t allowed to. This was so different from Guatemala: in America, education is actually important.
In Guatemala, especially in the small towns like the one I grew up in, the value of education was virtually nonexistent.

When you started to struggle as the level of toughness began to increase, you would simply decide drop out of school and start working. Even at the young age of 8 I had many friends who, having decided that school just wasn’t for them, had dropped out of school and began joining their parents to work. When this would happen all the teachers would do was wish them the best of luck. What is worse is that most of the time, the parents never having completed school themselves, did not see it as necessary to force them to go back. They would happily accept the extra help the child could offer in the form of a couple extra quetzals (the currency of Guatemala) to be able to put more food on the table. Why couldn’t we do this in

America?
When I told my teachers that I wanted to quit school and they said I could not, I did not believe what I was hearing. I tried to explain to them, “you don’t understand, I don’t need to go to school” they would refute, “No Freddy, it is you who doesn’t understand how important it is that you do.” It was a battle of beliefs between two very different cultures, a battle I was destined to lose… and thank goodness I did.
Moving to America has done so many more things for me than I could’ve ever anticipated. Even now I have difficulty fully fathoming the profound impact it has had on my life. Not the least of these was my attitude towards education. If I had been in Guatemala this would be a completely different story. I would not be writing this paper because I wouldn’t have gone to college; and probably wouldn’t have even graduated high school in all honesty. Being in the American education system has taught me true value of education. I was not allowed to quit in third grade and that has taught me that even though I might feel like quitting, I know that with a little effort and perseverance through the struggle, I can will gain things that will ultimately be useful and beneficial for my future.