Immigration Day

I am writing about Fifi and sue. Fifi’s dad is from Italy and her mom is from Germany. Growing up she lived in Germany. Fifi’s school system is very different from the school system in the U.S. They went to elementary school for 4 years and they had two different kindergarten classes. After elementary school they went to a high school depending on how smart they were and if they liked school or not, the lowest amount of time they could go to school was two hours and the most they could go to school was nine years, Fifi went to school for nine years because she enjoyed school and got good grades. To finish high school she had to take one test that was six hours long one that was fur hours long one that was two hours long and was that was an oral test that was only a half an hour long. She came to the U.S. For collage, collage in Germany is very different than collages in the states. In Germany she lived only a few minutes away from collage with her boyfriend. She said she enjoys collage in the states more because we have dorms and she likes living in dorms. She was born a year after the wall in berlin came down, her mom was crying because she hadn’t seen her brother in a long time because he lived on one side of the wall and she lived on the other. She grew up speaking english and german. They other lady I had was Sue. Sue is from china, she got her visa and came over to the U.S. Around 1945. She came over for collage just like Fifi. She came over to study chemicals and science. She got married and adopted two girls from china. When she came to the U.S. She only had one suitcase. In 1945 it was very easy to get a visa and she got one very fast. The school system was very similar to the one we have here. Only they don’t have preschool in china. When she was growing up they didn’t have snow days they took shovels to school and shoveled their way. Their were very many schools in china and so they walked to school. Their was a market right by their house so they got everything from their. They also didn’t have fridges so when they bought something they used it right away. They lived in an apartment and they had very little yard room. One of the things she has enjoyed the most is the fruit here because we always have it and its really big, one of the things she has disliked the most here is the other food because she loves Chinese food and its not the same here as it is in china.
This experience is important to me because we got to hear about how other people got to the U.S. And how it effected their lives, and what made their lives better and what made them worse. Also we got to learn about other cultures and about how others live. Before Immigration day I din’t even know that for 40 years Germany was split in to two right down the middle of a big city and that your couldn’t cross the border, so most people didn’t see their families for 40 years. I also didn’t know that in china when Sue was living their she didn’t have a fridge, when they bought something they used it right away. I also didn’t know that it snowed in china other than on the mountains and that if it snowed they didn’t have a snow day they just brought their shovels to school and shoveled their way to school.
This changed my perspective on a lot of thing, I always thought that everywhere had the same schooling system as we do at Zeeland christian but after we talked with both Sue and Fifi It made me realize that everywhere has a different school system weather it be no preschool or only four years in elementary school and sometimes nine years in high school. Another way it changed my perspective is that I thought that everyone has fridges and bought stuff for that week, but after Sue told her story about going to the market to get the food when you needed it that made me realize that everywhere is different. Another thing is that Fifi told me that they didn’t have dorms you could stay at for collage you had to have a house, so she lived with her boyfriend who also went to the collage. Immigration day was by far one of the funniest days we have had here in 7th grade, even though we didn’t go anywhere or do anything but interview people who have immigrated it was still really fun. The people we had had both funny stories and serious stories, I learned much more about immigration than I could’ve ever learned in a class room. I think that they people who came enjoyed telling their stories because it brought them home without actually going back to where they came from. Some of the stories other people shared while we had open mic blew me away, like their was a bomb and it hit they lady’s house when she was a baby and she was in her crib and her door flew off the hinges and landed on her crib and it blocked all of the stuff that flew around but a piece of the bomb hit a guy walking down the street and killed him instantly, I think that God had her saved so she could tell us this story and we could be blow away by how great God is and how their still are miracle’s even though its not in the bible times.