When I was a child, I never thought that one day I would go to a country other than China. Until one day, my father came home and said to me, "Son, we are going to the United States." This sentence changed me. Later in life, my mother went to the United States before us. But before that, I had never been to a country so far away from China, and for me, it all happened so fast that it didn’t feel real. And now I'm here. I still remember that when I was still in China, I was a very naughty child. I often made my parents angry. When we had conflicts, I was very rebellious and would go against them. I also ran away from home two or three times, but I still cried in the end, going home.

After our family got on the plane from Wenzhou to Guangzhou to apply for an immigrant visa, I remember that we stayed in Guangzhou for a week, and we also ate a lot of special snacks in Guangzhou. After obtaining the immigrant visa, we began to prepare for our trip to the United States. On the way, we needed to transfer to Hong Kong and then take the plane from Hong Kong to the United States. It was not until we boarded the plane to the United States that I felt for the first time, "I am going to a country far away from China."

I got off the plane and stood on foreign soil for the first time. Everything was strange to me. When I came out of the airport and saw my mother, I cried. She hugged us, and she cried too. From the moment I saw my mother, I suddenly felt that I could no longer do anything that would make her worry. We got in the car that my cousin drove to pick us up and went to his house. In the car, he said to us, "You have just arrived in the United States. You can get familiar with the environment first." After taking a shower, I was ready to go to bed, but I couldn't fall asleep no matter what. Because of the time difference between the United States and China, my current physical time was still in China. It was 11 o'clock in the evening in the United States and 11 o'clock in the morning in China. Apparently, I didn't get a good night's sleep that night.

After a week of time difference at my cousin’s house, we moved to our home in the United States, which also meant that our life in the United States had officially begun! After packing everything up, my brother and I went to the elementary school that my cousin had decided on for us. Because it was my first time going to a foreign school, the anticipation and uneasiness kept me awake all night. I began to imagine what would happen in elementary school. On the first day of school, the teacher introduced us to the school environment. I made my first friend in the United States. He was also Chinese, but he already spoke fluent English, so he helped me a lot with things I didn’t understand.

The time in elementary school in the United States passes very quickly. Unlike China, American elementary schools spend most of the time playing. School ends very early, and there is not much homework. In Chinese primary schools, our school dismissal time is after four o'clock, and we basically have homework every day. School is out at one or two o'clock in the United States, giving me more time to do what I like, which makes me very happy.

In the United States, our family celebrates traditional Chinese festivals, such as Chinese New Year, Mid-Autumn Festival, and Lantern Festival. But our family doesn’t have the custom of celebrating American holidays, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. I love festivals on both sides because I get to have so many different vacations and experiences at the same time.

I graduated from elementary school in the blink of an eye because my family was working. We went to another elementary school halfway. The only regret was that because it was so sudden, I didn’t leave any contact information for my friends. After that, my brother and I went to the same middle school. In middle school, we also met many new friends. They came from different cultures, so we often had many misunderstandings when getting along with them, but I also learned a lot from it.

During my last year of middle school, that thing that everyone knows happened ------ COVID. Because of this, many things have changed. We no longer need to go to school every day but have to do remote learning in front of the computer. Our middle school graduation trip and graduation ceremony were also canceled due to COVID, and the graduation ceremony was changed to be held on Zoom, of course.

The experience of immigrating from China to the United States will undoubtedly be a huge turning point in my life. Life in the United States has transformed me from childhood to adulthood.