ENGLISH
level
VOCAB
moving to
america
BY
Maynor
Lopez
T
he biggest decision I could
ever have made in my life
was coming to the United
States. I was just 17 years old
when I decided it was time to
leave my hometown. It wasn’t
a decision that just drastically
changed my life; it also brought
me many challenges. Hoping
there would be a new horizon
waiting for me with new opportunities, I departed home without knowing how tough life was
going to be. I left my adorable
48
home and lovely family in search
of a better life in the U.S.A.
Arriving in the United States was
something totally different than
what I expected. So anxious, I was
hoping to see the perfect world I
had always heard of but, in reality, it was so different than how I
imagined it. On the one hand, it
is an enormous country with big
cities with a diverse cultures. On
the other hand, there are crowded cities with so many people
that are always going back and
forth all the time and cars run on
the streets making a lot of noise.
The way of life people live here
was so distinct and much different than it was back home.
For example, in Washington DC,
the city where I arrived at first,
people work different shifts.
Some people work at night, others
during the day and some others work day and night. Because
IN OUR OWN WORDS
they are always busy working,
they don’t have time to have a
meal at a specific schedule so
they eat whenever they can.
Also, most of the people who
live here don’t cohabitate with
their family. In lieu they live by
themselves, and they are independent. In my culture that
is something totally different
because as a family we live together and we always support
each other. In the end, this was
the city I planned to live in for
a while; I started to get used to
the idea of living here.
I came to this land of opportunities without expecting there
would be enormous obstacles
to overcome. The biggest issue
I had in the USA was the language. By not knowing English,
everything was so difficult. First,
I didn’t know how to get around
on the streets by myself. Read-