Draft #1 of Literacy Narrative

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Life as an immigrant is many times hard. Life as an immigrant, who does not speak the primary language spoken here in the U.S, is even more difficult. With my feet dangling off the airplane seat and looking out the small window, I only wondered how different my life would be like away from the motherland. Upon landing, I could not ignore the weird gibberish the folks here were speaking. I furrowed my eyebrows at the weird sounds I was hearing. Walking out of the airport, I could not wait to tell me family back home how weird Americans sounded.
These unusual street names I looked up at had me puzzled. I would try to pronounce them and annoyingly would give up. I remember vividly going to my cousin’s house and opening a Thomas and Friends book they once had. With my American-born cousins sitting next to me, I proceeded to read the book. Now, some serious gibberish was coming out of MY mouth! “Chan chin la bon cha”. I was making up sounds for the words I clearly could not read from the book. My cousins laughed and gave me strange looks as I was “reading” almost resembling a babbling baby. To me, on the other hand, I was perfectly reading an English book and did not know of any hilarious mistakes I was making.
Starting school was difficult because the teachers would only speak to me in that weird language again. I raised my hand anytime they mentioned my name but was tight lipped for everything else. I was not progressing in that class and the teachers quickly took notice. It was then that the best decision for my education was taken. I was placed in a class with children who were just like me. They would speak to me and my eyes would widen because there was finally someone else who spoke Spanish and who was not my family.
When I started learning English in that classroom, I started to feel a change in myself. When I would go home and watch the television, I was able to make up some of the words being said. Although I did not know many words in English, I was soon to become a bilingual individual, something that many other are not.

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