My Immigrant Story
When people meet me for the first time they are surprised to learn that English is my second language. Si es verdad. The fact is, because of the choices my parents made I started high school with the English reading comprehension of a second grader. I still have some resentment and I sometimes struggle to transform it into gratitude. I am aware that the resentment comes from “what if“ thinking. Let’s face it, "what if" thinking rarely helps anyone. What if my parents didn’t move us nine times by the time I was eighteen years old? What if we didn’t go back and forth from the US to Uruguay numerous times growing up? What if I didn’t do third to seventh grade in Uruguay but instead would have stayed in the US throughout my schooling? What if I didn’t go to four different elementary schools in two different countries with two different languages? I suppose I would have had a more stable childhood and adolescence. Perhaps I would’ve felt that I wasn’t always trying to catch up
