Crying was the easy part letting go was the hard. My grandma’s tears brought me sadness on the whole journey to America. I felt doleful for not hiding my emotions from her since it was one of the reasons of making her tear up. I don’t know about my brother but I for one was so aggravated towards the fact that I couldn’t choose whether I wanted to stay or not, since I was only a little one, but what if I chose to stay? What would life be like? Who would be my friend, my guardian? So many questions but no chance of finding the answers.

When my flight arrived at the airport at two in the morning on November, I saw the tears of my loved ones. Oh how I missed them. At that moment of hugging and crying from the contentment of intense joy, I felt worn down, probably because of the airplane ride. When I went to lie down in my dad’s car, I thought to myself how its night time and everyone might be sleeping back home. The thought of that made me even more despondent.


Rewinding back to 2004 on November to the day I was about to sit in the taxi cab to go to the airport, I would have asked myself, what would be some of the advantages and disadvantages of staying? Greeting my family members every morning, playing with cousins, learning more about my culture; now those would be some of the advantages of staying. These advantages might have had a tremendous effect on me. Though they are just the advantages of staying but what would the disadvantage of staying be?
Realizing how enjoyable and boisterous life would be like with all the advantages of staying I did not realize what all of the possible disadvantage of me staying would be. If I stayed these would have been some of the disadvantages: having diverse friends and diverse teachers, a distinct school, not having my parents and brother by my side. Some of the disadvantages are despairing. I mean if it weren’t for these people and places I would not be who I am and what I have accomplished in life. I would not know what to do without my mom. I mean who would be my role model, my hero, most importantly my mom? Knowing this fact I couldn’t imagine myself to stay behind with my other family members.

So maybe after all moving here was not such a horrendous idea. Asking myself these questions brought me to the conclusion of that if I had not moved here I would not have the same opportunities to do good things with my life and I would not have known all the people I am so grateful to and most importantly I would not be who I currently am. Though the wonders of how my personality would have been if I did not come to America still remain.