Place with a Memory Just like everyone in the United States of America, excluding Native Americans, I’m an immigrant and/or come from immigrant descendants. This means everyone has a race or ethnic group from which they descend from, and they may or may not follow the cultural aspects of their kin. For me, I am an immigrant who moved to the United States from Pakistan at the age of two (2002), so while my parents grew up with a great deal of culture and tradition, I did not; I only have what they attempted to affix on me. Being a first-generation immigrant, I grew up with all of my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents directly on the opposite side of the world from me, so to me my real family was only between me, my mom, my dad, and my
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The first thing I saw after getting out of the airport from the dreaded sixteen hours flight was a huge crowd of people, and little did I know that two thirds of the crowd were my family members when one of my uncles ran up and hugged me. I was a day behind in my sleep schedule and all I could remember was almost screaming for my life. After that it just got livelier and livelier, meeting so many older but familiar faces and some tiny new faces, and me, slightly terrified, but also joyful watching as my parents reminisce with their parents and siblings, screaming and cheering. Now let us go back to present day, but mid-January. I am leaving the airport once again off of that always atrocious sleepless sixteen hours flight, and flowers are being thrown at me, put around my neck, and then I am handed bouquets. Without a doubt, everyone was screaming and cheering just like last time, and asking me if I remember them, which I mostly do, but this time more relaxed and instead of just my parents reminiscing, I am …show more content…
The first thing I noticed while there was how intense the sound was. Right off the bat you would hear some sort of drumming, people screaming, whether it was due to fighting or selling fruit, excessive honking from cars, and every other sound you could imagine. The fruit sellers would yell right outside people’s doors, and once, I woke up in the middle of the night because someone was selling bananas outside. The cars honked so much that I was convinced some people only did it because they liked the way it sounded; however, here in California, cars only ever honk to embarrass others. Driving in Pakistan is not exactly the safest job in the world, there would be cars going in two different directions in the same lane and all kinds of speeds; I will never understand how my uncles and dad drove like this, but this does explain the honking. The only thing similar was the weather; the seasons went pretty much the same, however, there was obviously more rain. One thing is that there are barely any air controlled rooms, so the cold or hot air would get in the house easily. You really had to bundle up at night to avoid catching a cold. This was one of the biggest aspects of my life I took for
The first thing I saw after getting out of the airport from the dreaded sixteen hours flight was a huge crowd of people, and little did I know that two thirds of the crowd were my family members when one of my uncles ran up and hugged me. I was a day behind in my sleep schedule and all I could remember was almost screaming for my life. After that it just got livelier and livelier, meeting so many older but familiar faces and some tiny new faces, and me, slightly terrified, but also joyful watching as my parents reminisce with their parents and siblings, screaming and cheering. Now let us go back to present day, but mid-January. I am leaving the airport once again off of that always atrocious sleepless sixteen hours flight, and flowers are being thrown at me, put around my neck, and then I am handed bouquets. Without a doubt, everyone was screaming and cheering just like last time, and asking me if I remember them, which I mostly do, but this time more relaxed and instead of just my parents reminiscing, I am …show more content…
The first thing I noticed while there was how intense the sound was. Right off the bat you would hear some sort of drumming, people screaming, whether it was due to fighting or selling fruit, excessive honking from cars, and every other sound you could imagine. The fruit sellers would yell right outside people’s doors, and once, I woke up in the middle of the night because someone was selling bananas outside. The cars honked so much that I was convinced some people only did it because they liked the way it sounded; however, here in California, cars only ever honk to embarrass others. Driving in Pakistan is not exactly the safest job in the world, there would be cars going in two different directions in the same lane and all kinds of speeds; I will never understand how my uncles and dad drove like this, but this does explain the honking. The only thing similar was the weather; the seasons went pretty much the same, however, there was obviously more rain. One thing is that there are barely any air controlled rooms, so the cold or hot air would get in the house easily. You really had to bundle up at night to avoid catching a cold. This was one of the biggest aspects of my life I took for