So Far Yet So Close It had been a long trip, yet we were so close. I’m from Cuba; I came to Miami thirteen years ago at the age of seven. I came with my mother and little brother. If you see the World Map you would see that Florida is just right on top of Cuba, but how we got here was a little more than just s ninety mile trip. We left Cuba on a fourth of July in 2003. We did not come straight to Miami, Florida. We first went to Mexico. We stayed there for a week at my mom’s friend’s house. Everything was extremely different from my country. It was very pretty, and everything was bigger. I liked everything except for the food; I liked the food I ate in Cuba better. The language was very unusual as well, but I found it very interesting; I even learned a couple of new words. But our ultimate goal was to come to Miami to our family, so we had to keep on moving. We left Mexico, but in an uncommon way. We had to cross the border to come to the United Sates. It was very frightening; I saw military men with riffles in their hand, I remember that my mom was holding my hand, but she would hold it harder every time we got closer. I thought that me and my family were going to be killed or something because they were looking at us with mean faces. Thank god that we crossed the border successfully. After we crossed the border, we had to go to immigration, and they started interviewing us. We had to stay in a room for three days. We were technically in lock down until they found out who we really were. That was probably the worst three days of my entire life. Even though they did bring us food, I would still stay hungry and we couldn’t shower either. We were terrified because we didn’t know how long we were going to have to stay there at first. Thankfully, the third day came; it was about twelve in the afternoon, and they told us we were good to go, free at last! I have never seen my mom so happy in her life, and I was really happy too. When we left that horrible place, we went to Huston, Texas. We stayed at a hotel for two days. That was still not our destination though, it was Miami of course. The hotel was the most beautiful thing I’ve seen at that time. Everything was very sparkly, clean, and huge. I was so speechless that I had my mouth open the whole time. When I got into my room I was like a baby again, exploring all the new things I saw. The first thing I did was take a shower, a bubble bath just like I’ve seen in movies.