Imagine moving to a completely new place as a 4 year old kid. Having your family pulled away from you at such a young age, everything that you knew being changed around you. Your day to day life routine being changed. Maybe I was a 4 year old, and it may be safe to say that I most likely don’t remember much, but I know who it impacted very abruptly. My older sister, Sandra. She is one of the biggest role models in my life and she is one of the strongest and most positive people that I know.

My sister was only 15 when she moved to America. Her finding out that she will be moving was one of the hardest changes in her life that she had to go through. Not only did she not know anybody but she didn’t even know the language. She had to be thrown into high school where there is a complete different curriculum. Before I get too ahead of myself though, the actual moving trip was the hardest part. My mom had packed all of our stuff from our little apartment and we watched all our cardboard boxes loaded into a truck and sent off to the closest post office. I remember sitting at the airport and watching the tears streaming down my family’s faces. I had been too young to understand what was even going on. My sister was pulling on her best friends like it was tug of war when she was told to go to the plane. The flight was the longest flight ever. My family cried most of the flight to our new home. Entering Park Ridge, we arrived to our brand new built home. This house was built by my father, who had specially built the house for his family who was now joining him after many years of being seperated.

After a couple of weeks of living in the US, my sister had realized she had to go to school. Maine South did not have an ESL program. The ESL program stood for English as a Second Language. Due to this, she had to go to Maine West where they had this program for her. Sandra was pretty quick to get into the flow of things and adapt to her new surroundings. She decided pretty quickly that she wanted to be taken out of the program and continue as a normal student. She decided all of these things for herself. Now my sister is 29, and got through college on her own without having English as her first language. To this day she has been able to push herself and achieve her goals.

Sandra has done many things in life to make me look up to her and I can say I am so proud to call her my sister. She has cared for me since the day I was born. The year before I was born she had lost a sister and my mom lost her daughter due to heart failure. Since that moment, my sister had been scarred and she knew she was going to do everything to take care of me. She has accomplished so much in life, like just earning her Masters and now going into dental school.

My sister has gone through so many difficult things in life and so many changes. Somehow, she always manages to keep a smile on her face and care for everybody around her. I aspire to reach the goals that my sister has. I want someone to say I achieved things in life just the same way that they say that about my sister. She has shown me the ropes and the most important things in life. I know that I have to stay positive, even if you are in a bad situation.