book

Family Heritage Paper

21 Pages 1721 Words 1557 Views

All immigrants go through a lot of different changes while sharing the same experience while moving away from their home to a whole new country. People move to the United States from all different parts of the world, whether its from Japan, India, Russia or even small countries like Armenia. I decided to do the interview about my mother because she has had a rough journey traveling from one country to another. My mother was born and raised in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. She loved her comfort zone since her whole family was in one city. She had graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Economics and was working at my grandfather’s factory as an assistant. When my mother met my father, he decided that they should move together to Moscow, Russia. My mom had to leave behind her parents and her family, to start a family of her own. My mother gave birth to me in Moscow, when she was twenty three years old. My father’s side of the family moved to the United States right before I was born and due to some documents issues, they were not able to visit us for ten years. In 2004, when I was just twelve years old, my grandfather that lived in Los Angeles was diagnosed with cancer and unfortunately had passed away. My father went to immediately buy a ticket for the next flight to Los Angeles to make it in time for his father’s funeral. A few days later, my father called my mother and let her know that we also need to buy tickets and come by him as soon as possible. It was so many years ago and since I was young, I don’t remember much of what and how things happened. When I asked my mother what that felt like for her, she told me “I thought we would just go for a few weeks, it never crossed my mind that I would have to move to a whole new and different country once again.” When we got here, my parents decided to officially move to the United States. My mother was forced to adapt to a completely different environment. When she had moved to Moscow from Yerevan, her experience was less overwhelming for her. This was due to the fact that she knew Russian her whole life and Russia was only two hours away from Armenia. However, the move to Los Angeles, she says, was the hardest obstacle she had to face as a mother and as a wife. My mother did not know English, so that alone was scary for her to enter somewhere where she could not communicate with the people around her. Thankfully, there is a large Armenian community in Los Angeles and I believe that this has eased her transition at least in one way. Also, what was great is that community colleges actually offer ESL classes which are English classes that are offered to people for whom English is a second language. My mother attended these classes, but she did n

Read Full Essay