Personal Essay: Moving To America

514 Words2 Pages

I come from a country where freedom of speech and safety are not priorities, which ultimately pushed my family to move to the United States seeking a better future for my brother and me. At 13 years old I was victim of a robbery which was surprisingly very common in the country I come from, Venezuela. One morning my mom was driving me to school and we were stuck in traffic; I took my phone out of my backpack and two men in a motorcycle approached our car and started knocking the windows asking me to give it to them, these men were armed like any other delinquent in my country, when I refused, two other men in another motorcycle approached our car and started kicking the doors and yelling for me to turn over my phone, I kept refusing while my mom was screaming at me to please give my phone to them before they did something to us. Luckily traffic started to move and my mom and I managed to scape. Crimes like robberies and murders are part of the daily life of the citizens of my country. After this, my parents realized that we weren't safe in our country anymore, my dad had been kidnapped before that and now I had been in a …show more content…

Packing up my whole life and starting over somewhere else wasn't easy for me, in the beginning I struggled with many obstacles, like anxiety and fear, I had to adapt to a new environment, language and people; but it was just another thing that life threw at me. The experiences I had both in Venezuela and the United States really opened up my eyes to many things, I didn't only learn to be grateful, but I also learned the value of life and that safety and well-being are a right and not a privilege. I lived in a country where you're supposed to keep to yourself and don’t express your opinions unless you wanted to put yourself in danger and today I speak my mind knowing that I'm safe and I have the freedom to think differently, I'm not afraid to speak up for what I think is

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