The True Feelings Of A Technical Immigrant

Location: St. Paul-Minnesota International Airport Date: Sunday March 22, 2015 Time: 7:18PM Emotional Status: All the emotions One thing technical immigrants are really good at is fitting 365 days of love and togetherness in just a few short days. Days with family are extremely predictable. Day one: Meeting everyone, happiness all around, and lots of hugs. Day two: waking up in the excitement of being together, starting the day of events; then, the next couple days are the same- loud, chaotic, and a little overwhelming. The last day, the most dreaded day, is always full of sadness (at least for me, some people are probably super happy). I have a very tough time leaving my family, especially the older members. The older family members are some of the best people to be with. They teach the best life lessons, the best advice, and give the best hugs. It's hard to apart from all of this. Sitting in the airport, I'm reminded of the first time I went "home". It

Familia. In the western culture, family is a few choice people: siblings and parents while extended family consists of grandparents and first cousins; then, there are the distant relatives: second cousins who are once, twice, thrice removed. However, in eastern culture, family is all of the above. It's very simple. Your cousins are your siblings, and there is no differentiating between first and second cousins. They are equally loved and respected. Family is very important in this culture. For example, many families live together or close by. In America, it is strange for a child to live in their parents home past 18, but in my family, it is only logical. Here, many parents are put into assisted living homes whereas in many other cultures, parents live with their children. For technical immigrants, this is one aspect of our parents’ culture that we take-with some modifications ofcourse. We live with our parents, and we promise to take care of them when they need it. I

T echnically, I'm an immigrant. I say technically because I never truly migrated; I was held in someone’s arms who did migrate. Technically, I'm an immigrant. I'm not the only one out there. Actually, there are a lot of us whose parents migrated from their mother country to this new fast paced, modern one. Us technical immigrants live a very confusing life- a life pulled into two. WARNING: Cliche stories and ideas but mostly true. Language. Most of us are at least bilingual; some people even spoke another language before English, and though it's great that we can switch languages halfway through a sentence, we're also made fun of. No, not by the native-English speakers, by the people "back home". Over time, living in our new country, we've developed an accent (an accent which I am proud of) that impairs us from pronouncing certain words right. Not on purpose but because we were never taught how to form those sounds. Let's say we can get the