Amy Decker
EN105 First Year Writing Seminar
June 20, 2012
Far away from my heart After me and my girlfriend decided to get married at the age of 19, I felt that I boarded the train that will take me to my ever dreamed future. Nothing real fancy but a lovely wife, children, a warm home, and my diploma of pharmacologist/ Biochemistry that’s all I really need. Well, I also need a job, but I already was working hand to hand with my father in his Pharmacy which I plan to take over when he decided to retire. After all, that’s what my mayor is about. What I never pictured was that after I’ve married my other half, had a beautiful daughter and be half way of my bachelor degree. I will have to leave my whole world behind and start a new life without my wife and my new-born Gabriela. I have to move to a country where I don’t even know the language, the country where I was born but left when I was a couple month old. I have to move to The USA where I don’t have anything more than my aunt and a huge desire to find an opportunity where I can provide for my family. That’s when I asked myself, it was possible to start a new life, learn a new language and culture when you are away from your mind and your heart?
Having no idea of what I will have to go through, I decided not to look back, or else I won’t aboard the airplane that was my ride to my new life. A couple hundred dollars in my pocket and a luggage full of fear, frustrations, but most of all full of hope, that was everything I had to start my unforeseen life. My first aim was to get a job. A job, something that sounds so easy becomes a nightmare when you have no idea where to start. After a couple week of desperation, I finally got a job for a cleaning company. The language wasn’t a problem because 90 % of the employees were Hispanic, the problem that with that kind of money, I will never be able to bring my heart back to my body. So I decided to take the next step and go to talk to an Army recruiter, he pictured me with everything I ever dreamed plus a bonus (couple of thousand dollars because it was war time). The recruiter also stated that being a USA soldier, I would be able to do the legal arrangement to bring my family to The USA. It is amazing how being away from your loved ones replace the entire ambitious one may have by the sole big desire to hug them. Nothing else needed.
At the basic training, I develop a miraculous speed due to my lack of understanding what we were supposed to do. Where are my bilingual, Hispanic people when I need them? I had to run faster than everyone else in order to get to the locker room first to see what we were commanded to get and be back with the object needed. Do not ask me the specified amount of time. I did not know the time given to us, but I knew it was a very short period of time. In such rush, I looked at what they were digging out their locker and got the same thing out of mine and got there back on time. Mission accomplished. I still feel the loudest voice of the drill Sergeant yelling in my ear, full of anger and frustration because whatever he wants me to do; I wasn’t doing it. No one disrespect the Drill Sergeant. I can still feel his saliva on my face; I was shaking of fear. I was thinking to myself what did I do wrong? Since I was the only one he was yelling at. The situation was raising the level of angry to a point that another Sergeant approached us an incredible to me; I understood what he said to the frustrated Drill Sergeant. –calm down, Diaz does not speak English. I did not speak English back there, but I did speak body language, and I understand when the Drill Sergeant told me by the looks of his eyes –how dumb I made him feel, and he