The Struggles of Coming to the US

Our Afghan Allies Have Earned Their Place in the US

An Afghan school girl sings a prayer in celebration and for blessing during a ground breaking ceremony in the village of Dar Bhabba in the Nangahar province May 15. The school that will be built here is funded by the Jalalabad Provincial Reconstruction Team (Commons)

In my life, I’ve had a lot of goals and accomplishments. This week I want to write about my biggest accomplishments and how hard it was to achieve them. My biggest accomplishments have been adjusting to a new country and starting my writing journey. It was not easy leaving my family behind and having to adjust to a new country, new people, and a whole new language. However, America has given me lots of chances to be better than how I could have ended up. I have a better education than the one I could have gotten in Afghanistan, and I also got an opportunity to start my own blog without having to worry about the Taliban.

Now, I’m going to talk about how hard it was to achieve these accomplishments. In Afghanistan, my dad left us to come to America because the Taliban were after him and it was dangerous for him to stay there. I didn’t know about this fact until after when we arrived in the US. When he arrived, he went through a lot of trouble working with the Afghan government to help get us to America too. One of my dad’s friends, Will Selber, helped us get our visas so we could come and join my dad. It has a unique story that I will write about in the next post.

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Anyway, while my dad was working hard to bring us to safety, my mom had to move to my grandparents’ house so that we could stay safe until we departed for the US. It was a plus staying with my grandparents because they could help us pack everything we needed. My aunts, my mom, my siblings, and I packed most of our stuff. We had a total of 13 bags for the flight! Actually my mom had to take care of those 13 bags and six kids (all under 13 years old) while knowing no English and having traveled nowhere before! Isn’t she a champion? At the airport, my family was very emotional and everyone was crying, but we eventually went inside. My uncle helped my mom with the talking and paperwork until he had to leave since he wasn’t coming with us.

When we got on the plane, I was nervous because it was my first time flying. Our first stop was in Turkey, where we took another plane to actually arrive in the U.S. On the plane, I was amazed by the food, the screen on the seat in front of me, and even the bathroom! When we got off the second plane, a man in a suit picked us up and drove us to our new apartment in DC.

It was extra hard for my mom because my dad wasn’t with us at first. She didn’t have a job, a car, or a driver’s license, and she didn’t understand English. Luckily, my dad’s friends brought us food until he could come to us. At that time, my dad was in a military school in Texas. Later, he joined us in Washington, D.C., where he continued his master’s degree at a big military school.

When my dad finally came, he brought us some presents, but I didn’t care about the gifts as much as just seeing him. I hugged him tightly. My dad was very proud of my mom for how brave she was. My mom was also so happy to see him because she missed him and because she knew she couldn’t take care of us all alone forever.

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More than 400 Afghan refugee children wait in line as Camp Eggers’ personnel participating in a volunteer community relations mission with the Aschiana School in Kabul drop off clothing and school supplies. Aschiana (Afghanistan’s Children – A New Approach) is an Afghan non-governmental organization that provides services, support and programs to more than 4,500 working street children through centers in Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, Herat and Parwan. The non-profit organization was a major beneficiary of Give Me Socks, a small foundation developed by a Department of Defense employee stationed at Camp Eggers dedicated to providing Afghan child refugees with winter garments, school supplies and hygiene products. NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan is a coalition of 37 troop-contributing nations charged with assisting the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in generating a capable and sustainable Afghan National Security Force ready to take lead of their country's security by 2014.

Starting school was one of the hardest parts for my siblings and me. We started about three or four months after arriving. It was difficult because we weren’t used to the schedules in American schools and we didn’t understand English. We struggled to ask for things we needed. Thankfully, our teachers understood our challenges and let us use Google Translate to help. Making friends was also hard since most of my classmates weren’t from my country or even anywhere close to it.

We practiced English words every day to help us in school. After about a year, we could fully understand and speak English without a problem, which I think is very impressive because there are so many words in English!

Looking back, I can’t believe I have adjusted to this new country so fast. I can fully speak English, I am getting As and Bs in the class, and I have made many friends. It is also amazing that my new country has given me a chance to start my own blog at the age of 10 years old. Can you believe my blog is coming to its second year in Aug?

That’s all I wanted to share this week. Comment below if you ever had to move and, if so, how did it go? Thank you so much for reading my blog! Have a great day! Bye!!!

Love,
Aqsa