A New Country, A New Life, And New Challenges

To discover and explore new places is always an adventurous and fun experience. I still remember the day when I came to the USA from India. That day was filled with amazing memories and as well as was a long journey for me, where it took 9000 Miles and around 19 hours in Aircraft to fly from a Small City in India to Worlds popular New York City. Moving from one country to another allowed me to experience many new aspects of life. Individuals move to the new country for many reasons either its career, political or just sake of discovery, I moved to have a better Career. A lot of people immigrate to have a better living, yet some move to explore new opportunities. Migrating to another country was not only informative, but it also provided me as an individual the chance to learn about the ways of life in other places too. I still remembered the day while walking through the airport and I was mesmerized by the large size of it. I am one of them who could relate to all of those individuals who moved to a new country to discover more about themselves and to explore more opportunities as well. When I got outside the Airport, everything was different, from people to infrastructure. Roads were wide and Buildings were high. That moment was very mesmerizing for me. The very next day I got up and I couldn’t wait to go out. I looked at my surroundings which were quiet, clean and beautiful and was very different. Everywhere, everything, everyone was new for me. I thought that I couldn’t live here, and I was nervous about that. It was not easy for me to leave everything and head towards a fresh new start. The hardest part about moving was to leave my best friend and next door neighbor with whom I had spent my entire past life. I had friends with whom I spend most of the time. Once I came here life started quickly and every day was a new experience for me. The college began not too long after I moved, which didn’t give me much time to make friends. The first week of my college felt like an eternity because I didn’t know anyone. Then eventually I met a lot of new people and started making friends and felt more comfortable. After that everything started getting back to normal. As time went on, I gradually learned many things. I remembered the American people were especially kind, and that they would help me to understand and be understood. I forgot about how much I missed my hometown and started to enjoy living in Delaware with my new friends.

Being in the new country, for me it was like inviting new culture, lifestyle and in general, starting a new journey in life again in a different environment. However in society, one may not find two cultures the same if one is located on the East coast and the other one is all the way on the West coast. There are more chances that one may suffer from culture shock in the destination country since some things will be automatically and obviously different to the home country. As bizarre as it looks, I have to call strange land to me as my home and I had to face many challenges before accepting it as so. The biggest difference that I was able to encounter upon arriving in the United States was my own judgment. I had a different perception of how Americans interact; I thought they interacted the way it is shown in Hollywood movies. Later after making new friends, interacting with more and more people, I was able to find a lot of cultural similarities between two countries and was surprised to know that they are just like individuals in India with values and cultures. I was fascinated by the help I received from them, either its exploring town or making me aware of different rules or regulation, and were very kind and helpful. Especially teachers in my college were always ready to help and have encouraged me to never give up.

When I came here in the United States, one of the crucial requirement, in order to live, was communicating in English. I moved from the background where English was taught as a secondary language and the primary language we used was Hindi, the local language of India. I finished my high school in India before moving. Life was a little bit complicated during the transition stage when I was learning to adjust to a new language, customs, and culture. I started back my school in a community college off as an ESL (English as Second Language) student and built up my confidence to interact with different type of people. I would be quiet most of the time so that people would not make fun of me. At one point, I felt like it was my weakness and I felt it was holding me back from expressing myself, however with interacting with more people it boosted up my confidence.

In the end, I explored many opportunities, and it took a lot of effort and sacrifices to stand firm and make moves. It was one of the toughest decision for me to move, yet it turned into the best decision of my life. I was able to learn and achieve a lot in the past few years. I was able to get a job before my graduation and was able to succeed in Life. I could not have imagined a better living and better education anyplace else in the world than the United States and I strongly believe that dreams do come true in this land.