college Essay Creative work for Portfolio

Tainara Candido
AP English
Immigration
The plane ride to America lasted several hours and seemed endless, my childish excitement exceeding my patience at the time. I repeatedly looked out the window to observe the clouds and fantasized of my new life in America. I worried about making new friends in a country that I didn’t know and a language I didn’t speak. I dreamed of attending school and learning English, a foreign language spoken by extroardinary people living in an enchanted land. Ever since my father’s arrival in America three years before mine, I envisioned meeting him in America and impressing him with my knowledge of the English language. I tried teaching myself English and memorized an abundance of words and numbers in English . Granted, I did not have a firm enough grasp of the Portuguese language at the time so teaching myself english was a difficult task, but in my six year old mind I could. America was a place I imagined resembling an utopia, a perfect country. Living in Brazil, my father often called home to regale my mind with stories of kind and generous Americans and of my favorite story about everyone getting along with each other, even cats and dogs. In my childlish innocence, I believed all of this possible in America and more; the land of opportunities.
My father walked across the American border from Mexico together with other illegal immigrants after hiring “coiotes” or coyotes, drug and human traffickers, to smuggle him across border lines. The coyotoes drove him along with his friends from Texas to Boston where he worked on raising money to pay for my mother and mine’s plane fare. Upon our arrival to America, we were faced with the challenges of learning to adapt in a foreign country along with the struggle of the foreign language. To this day, my mother struggles with English and has me translate, speak, and write for her. Whenever someone calls home in English, the phone is handed to me where I must then write down any information for my mother. My mother attends a Portuguese speaking Brazilian church and has only portuguese speaking friends and has no need to put the English language into practice. At first, my mother attended English classes but I was usually the one stuck completing her homework. I dreaded the afternoons in which she returned with homework since I knew I wasn’t going to be able to ride my bike that day. She’s leaned onto my English as a crutch and simply won’t stand up, which I no longer find irritating as I did in the beginning. I learned English in a matter of months and by the third grade I spoke accentless. I read every book I earned or bought for I was afraid of feeling stupid in not knowing the language and by the second grade, I read at a much higher level than my peers, one of my favorite books being Pride and Prejudice; granted the illustrated one with easeir to read words, but I easily caught up to my English speaking friends and surpassed them. I befriended many Americans as well and had formed a close-knit group with the children of my neighborhood with who I wrestled, biked, and kicked soccer balls.
America was a place of opportunity where-to my father immigrated, brought his family, and eventually granted us legal status there-in. The people were friendly and kind, willing to make friends with me,a foreigner that did not speak the language at first and who had different customs and traditions. I have greater educational benefits and opportunities that were unnaccessible in Brazil. I speak three languages now rather than just Portuguese and Spanish. I belong to a country now where a person has the opportunity to become famous through inventions and innovations like Bill Gates through the invention of Microsoft and John Pemberton, creator of Coca-Cola. Dreams are reality as education reaches the most exclusive of locations any occupation desired can be achieved through the use of pen to paper and hand to machinery.