The moment I heard my dad said we are moving to America I remember laughing hysterically, just one my dad’s weird jokes that he said. Then he said he was serious and as an eight year I didn’t really give it much thought, I was like awesome America sounds cool.  After a few days/weeks (don’t remember I was eight) I started to see furniture and items moving around the house and I was confused and I saw my family and friends crying or being sad and I was like wait what happened. Then on my last few days I realized that WERE MOVING, even though deep down I was excited I didn’t really act excited all I was thinking about that I’m not going to have my family and all the friends I made by my side each day to talk to. Also, I was really scared that I was never going to learn English because it was simply too hard to learn. It’s not like moving from state to state or Canada to America, while both of those are also very hard I was moving from Israel when I was eight which means I was scared and didn’t have anyone to help with what I need that spoke my language.

The process of the move wasn’t really all that hard, because I didn’t really have anything to do with it and didn’t help with anything. I was just kind of moving places, so the process of the move for me wasn’t that hard except losing my friends and family, but that hard except having to sit on a plane for 14 hours. Also, moving in was kind of cool, because our house here compared to what we had in Israel is like a mansion that had a pool in the neighborhood really close to us. Also everything was bigger and better in America after all America is the huge compared to Israel.

Moving and adjusting to life to America was alright considering my sister was going through the same thing and my parents helped me a bit with my English and I took a little bit of English courses in Israel before I moved. When we found out that we were for sure moving I took English class at my school, because I wasn’t that good in English, but it did help with the basics. There are a lot of Israeli families in Georgia which helped as well, with talking to people who have gone through the same thing you did. Then I also did third grade both in Israel and in America due to my lack of knowing English. In my years of third and fourth grade I took the course of ESOL which helps kids with English in school instead of taking language arts. Also, a big help that I had with my English is speaking English on a regular basis with my friends, teachers, and me and my sister helped each other too.

Now that I have been officially living in America I have realized it’s a lot different than living in Israel in almost every aspect like how people act, school, and more.

Also, I joined this program in third grade that’s called “tzofim” that is Israeli scouts that has a good cause of trying to connect kids in America with the Israeli environment, tradition, and religion. I am still in this same program and now I am a counselor for fourth grade boys and every year this program helps me feel closer and closer to the Israeli community. So, now overall moving to America was an amazing experience that I would never take back. One lesson from this fantastic journey is that taking risks can be very scary, but can also be helpful. Now that I have been here for around seven years I can say that moving was a blessing in disguise, meaning what I thought was a horrible mistake before was an amazing opportunity I’m lucky I took. This journey helped me with creating new friends, learning another language and changing my whole aspect on life. I think that you only have one life in this crazy world so take as many opportunities you can and be open minded.