Personal Narrative: Moving To America

Anxiety, it’s the feeling that came over me when I arrived at the airport to come to America. I was born in Brasil, it was my home. So boy was I shocked when I heard that we were moving to the United States, and I was only six years old. My parents thought we would have a better life here in America because, with all the “opportunities” it offered, it was the place to be. My father flew over one month before I was scheduled to; he planned on getting everything situated by finding a job and a place for us to live. Even with all the American movies I watched, my favorite being Batman, I only had a vague idea of what it would be like to live there. My mother would tell me, taking advantage of my young guilble mind, that I would love it, make a

When we reached the plane, the captain and another flight attendant stood at the door. They saw the sticker I was wearing and they saluted me. The captain said, to my surprise in Portuguese, “How would you like to see the cockpit son?”. I smiled and said, “I would like that very much”. I entered the cockpit and it looked just like inside of the Batmobile. It was getting to the time of takeoff so I saluted the captain and headed toward my seat. I got to my seat and there was a screen where we could watch movies; it was all in English though but they had Portuguese subtitles which helped me. About 10 min into the movie, the plane started to move. I grabbed my mother’s arm and held it tight. Soon after the plane began to ascend, I felt the pressure rising and looked out the window watching everything get smaller and smaller. The world looked like an ant colony. When the plane leveled out, I continued watching the movie. Time flew by quickly due to all the movies. Around the fifth movie, I started repeating some of the words they were saying and I knew what they meant because of the subtitles. English was easier than I thought. I started to make out sentences and I even ask the flight attendant for a glass of water in