The excitement filled the heart of an eight-year-old, as her mother received a letter with a VISA to move to America. Without realizing what this meant, she was very excited because everybody else was. Then soon came packing, and before they knew it was February, over 100 people gathered at her grandparent’s house to say goodbye. She realized that everything now will change no more big family turnouts and birthday extravaganza. With nine cars driving to the airport with them she holds onto the hands of her older brother and waved goodbye. She sees her mom crying and thinking about leaving her parents behind and when they return to their country and will they meet everyone again. After 23 hours of a journey, she is in a new land, “Welcome to New York” she hears over the loudspeaker in the airport, and everything is so new now that and she does not understand what these people are saying. She feels different in her skin because she no longer sees anyone similar to her ethnicity. Every night she cried with the idea of wanting to go home. She hated the fact that her parents brought her into a new world where she feels like she doesn’t belong and, she was just eight. She just wanted those times she had back home with her cousins where they played on the rooftop, told stories in the dark when the electricity went out, they all had tea by the balcony with biscuits on the side, the street food was amazing, and everything was whole again. On her ninth birthday in November where it was just her parents and her brother, her family back home made video calls to see her, but there was such a difference in the time zone that it was difficult to talk to everyone. She knows that it won’t be the same again.

She goes to school and there isn’t even one Bengali person to help translate and they talk to her with sign language like that even makes any sense to her. The struggle to make friends became harder because she no longer speaks the language. Before her parents used to be so involved in her education, but here they never understood the system, so they did not know what to do. So as they hoped for her to be the best student like she was back home. She had no motivation because she was so out of place. And worst of all they made fun of her for not being able to speak English, However, she was bilingual but that didn’t seem as important, they butchered her name because it wasn’t so common in America so she wondered could there be a change, one day she wakes up with a simple name like Anna Smith, a girl who speaks proper English. She started not to care about her grades anymore. Her parents kept pushing and never understood her struggles. As she continued trying to adjust, but she wasn’t always able to find the motivation in an unknown environment and the language she never spoke.