An Pham
Ms. Hansen
IH 1140
22 May 2013
College Essay A typical morning in Vietnam began with my mother gently waking me up. "Con ơi thức giậy đi", and she would drive me to school on her electric motorcycle through the crowds of people getting to work. The atmosphere always had a hot and humid feels to it, with the sweet aroma coming from the fruits that people sold on the side of the streets. I came from a middle class family in South Vietnam. My parents did not have the chance to go to college, but they worked very hard to ensure that my brother and I would have a better life than theirs. While living in Vietnam, my dad was a scooter driver. My mom was a coffee maker and a nail artist. Because both my parents only had high school diplomas, they could not find better work. To ensure a bright future for my brother and me, my parents decided to leave everything they had; family, friends, the country they grew up in, and the language they speak; to move to America. From May 30th, 2005, and onwards, my life was no longer the way it used to be, I was no longer surrounded by familiar faces. Life lessons, sacrifices, and my parents’ abilities to overcome hardships in a foreign land motivated me to become the person I am today. When my parents arrived to California, they were determined to find jobs. My parents spent two weeks looking through newspaper, trying to find jobs that they could do, even if only just a couple of hours a week. After two weeks passed, my dad starting to go to the supermarket and stood there all day long. At that supermarket there were a lot of people who stood around just like my dad. They were not standing there for fun, or because they were lazy, but rather they were there waiting for a job to come by. Small business employers such as construction companies and carpenters would occasionally go to the supermarket to look for people who would work for cheap pay. Knowing why my dad went to the supermarket everyday has changed me forever. When my family and I moved to America, I had the perspective that this magical place would give my family and me a better life, but I never thought that I would have to witness my parents going through the hardship of finding a job or learning a foreign language. Watching my parents struggle to speak English and find a job inspired me to make a goal for myself. I told myself that I would work very hard to learn English so that my parents would not have to struggle with