Undergraduate / My essay about coming to America (Is my topic too overused?) [6]

I woke up at 4a.m. and shook my brother who was sleeping next to me. "Let's wrestle," I said. "Okay," my brother replied casually without any show of drowsiness. In a small room crammed with two beds that carried a foreign odor, we got to our starting positions. All the ritual, its rule, and its fierceness were the same except for the setting. When I grabbed my brother's leg to trip him, Mom, also experiencing insomnia, came to our room, and we danced to our favorite Korean music through the night.

My first jetlag led me to an unplanned all-nighter. Nevertheless, the sleepless night did not stop me from exploring South Point, my first residence in the United States. In the morning, I went outside to the narrow hallway and breathed in the air of the square enclosed by the apartment buildings. I saw a few cars, palm trees, a swimming pool, and wall fences. Over the fences, I saw the endless sky touching the horizon of Texas; it seemed distant and unattainable. Between my previous life and my new life to come, I was to hibernate with no means of transportation and no friend to visit.

Another woman whose husband had just transferred from South Korea to the Rio Grande Valley visited us. My brother and I asked her to make curry with us and surely we did, for she seemed almost thankful to have found a task to occupy her mind and feel important, while my mom surrendered to weariness and was fast asleep. After cooking and eating, my brother and I went to the swimming pool and walked around its edges, pretending to drown each other. When I heard a dog barking outside the fence, my face lighted up. "I bet there are Americans living right behind this fence," I claimed. The wall, almost six feet tall, was covered with gargantuan cacti I had never seen before. I tried to look for a way to peep through the wall to look at the dog, but the unsympathetic concrete wall did not comply. I piled up rocks and jumped on them but resulted in no success. 'Can I ever overcome this wall?' I wondered. The wall for me had meant more than a mere physical barrier.

Five years later, I visited South Point again. The apartment which was the world to me at the time seemed incredibly small and nearly dilapidated. The wall, my obstacle at the time, restricted me no more. Like a baby attempting to take a first step, I had fallen countless times in the past five years before succeeding in standing up. Finally, I have befriended English and American culture and proved that my boundaries were unlimited.

Freely being engaged in my school, community, and the world, I have learned to overcome challenges with belief in myself. Whenever diffidence tries to creep on me, I remind myself of what Audrey Hepburn once said: "Nothing is impossible; even the word itself says 'I'm possible!'"

I've written this one for supplemental purposes. Some people think this essay doesn't really show who I am, and the topic is overused! Please let me know what you think. Thank you all in advance! :D