1. When reading number one the first thing that came to my head was moving to Freeport, Long Island in the beginning of fourth grade. It was a whole new scenery for me. First, I know how my own room. Two, out house was huge. Three, we had a horse stable as our back house and no horse. (However, my dogs did use to stay in the stables.) This was a shift for me, because I was given room, space, and air to breathe. The only thing that was displeasing was going to school with my siblings for the first time and everyone calling me by my family-nickname in public.
2. For number two, I decided to pick a time in my life where I had to make a mental and physical leave from my family. I’ve moved away from my primary family a few times, but each time was a little bit harder. My most recent time was the summer of 2015. I had just graduated High School and decided that i need a more stable environment for my life as a college student.
3. Skipping number three and brain storming on number four, i went for me being able to speak another language. I speak Jamaican Patois. It’s not that hard for me to switch between these languages because it’s something that i have been around since in the womb. I have an attachment to my language for many reasons. My major reason is because of my family. For my dad, he speaks Patois 24/7. Its his native language i suppose. My language is most often mimicked in a sense of humor most often. Some say it’s “broken English”. But my question is, how can a language be “broken”?

[These are my ideas so far for my personal narrative, however, I am leaning more towards number 2.]

#1. Both me and my sister were displaced when I moved from New York to South Carolina. Not only were we living in a whole new environment but we we also living with another parent. I went from living in a suburb to the country and from female parent to male.

#2. Another time I felt displaced was when I had to regularly come to the city by myself. I live in Long Island and have only been to the city with people who know their way around the city. Before starting school in Baruch, I’ve only been to the city a handful of time and trust me, it’s no Long Island.

#3. A meaningful place to me is my grandfather’s house, now my aunt’s house since he passed. He had the house built after coming from Trujillo, Honduras. This house has so many childhood memories, not only for me but practically my whole family.

P.s The time isn’t correct at the bottom. It’s an hour ahead if you weren’t aware so this isn’t late.

Prompt #1- Describe an experience in which you were displaced.

• A big moment in my life was when I moved from Brooklyn where I was raised to Staten Island. It was a new neighborhood and I didn’t like the idea of living so far to my cousins and to where i went to school. The first year we would travel back and forth to Brooklyn to go to school which was months of a new experience.

Prompt #2- Explore a place that is meaningful to you.

• A place that means a lot to me is Ecuador, my birthplace. My grandparents from my mom’s side live in Ecuador and I would always remember Ecuador as the place that I learned my first steps of life in. The time I visited Ecuador it was warming environment something different than USA, but not different as in bad.

Prompt #3- Different Languages I speak

• Languages are very important to me, growing up with spanish speaking parents I learned spanish and in school I learned english. Even though I can say I know spanish I am not a fluent spanish speaker. Spanish to me is my second language even though I learned it first, I say this because my spanish isn’t so strong since i can’t translate some english words to spanish words. I feel like I have so much more words to learn that are spanish.

Prompt 1: I felt displaced the first time I slept over at my friend’s house. It was for a week long and it was a week too long. I had to adjust myself to the family’s customs like waking up at 8 am for breakfast everyday and having bible studies.

Prompt 2: One leave taking experience that has affected me significantly was when my mother and father separated. Growing up without my father made me look up to my older brother for guidance in everything that I do.

Prompt 4: I speak many languages ranging from my mother to my college professor. Having many languages is something that I ponder about deeply because you are not being true to yourself if you have a lot of sides.

1.  (Question #1) A time when I felt “displaced” was when I was sent to Boot camp for a week the summer before my freshman year in high school. Even though it was for a short period of time I was with people I barely knew and there were lots of expectations of me that I was not used to back home. Although, I hated it when I was over there good things came about.  I became a much more independent human being and learned a lot of new things like time management.
2. (Question #2) A leave taking experience I have experienced was definitely going from my high school to Baruch. I was separated from my friends and my routine in which I was already used to. This leave taking experience has taught me the significance on coming out of my comfort zone.  As one of the counselors in SEEK once said, ” Growth begins where comfort ends.”
3. (Question #3) My elementary/middle school is a place that will forever be meaningful to me. I experienced so many experiences that made me the person I am today.  The people in this school became my second family.  In this school, I learned to write English, my first tooth fell out, gained life long friends, had my first arguments, had my first crush , my first tears of joy and sadness and learned a lot about life not just academics.

So far for the first prompt in which you describe an experience where you and your family felt displaced, i thought i would use the event where i lived in Jersey for a couple of months on and off. It was entirely different from Queens and it showed me another side of the world, where everything wasn’t so close and bunched together so i think i can write a good deal about side effects and so on.

My second idea came from the fourth prompt because i could relate to most of the elements in the essays of Tan and Rodriguez. Like most of my classmates, i come from a bilingual household and that gives you not only different styles of speaking english but also different styles of speaking spanish. also, i can’t roll my r’s in spanish so i thought i could also connect that with the last question that asked how languages reflect/express yourself.

My third idea came from the third prompt related Andre Aciman. He described in detail how foreigners become stagnant in there new place away from home, that it becomes their first home. Although the tri-state area was my first and only home, i can relate to the feelings he explains in “Shadow Cities”. There’s been lots of changes in my neighborhood from upscale to new demographics. So there’s a bunch of stuff, factual to anecdotal, that i can use for this topic.

1:One experience in which I was displaced, was when going to the Dominican Republic after having four years without going there. When I was there I felt displaced because I didn’t really knew anybody besides my family, and the kids that I knew were grown and our relationship was almost completely lost. Additionally, I didn’t know how to move around. I didn’t know how to get to places, therefore, I could only get to them if someone from there drew me over there.

2.One leave-taking experience that I had, was going to Puerto Rico for a whole summer without saying bye to some of my friends. Not everyone knew that I was leaving so I didn’t get so say goodbye to some people, and when I came back our relationship was a little distanced.

3.I’ve been exposed to many languages. When I went to P.R I was exposed to a different spanish, and Puerto Rican languages which I didn’t know but then came to understand what they meant. Also, when I settled here, english was not my first language, but spanish. Yet, I managed to learned. But along the way, I heard people speak “broken english”, and perfect english. Additionally, I took language classes in H.S and learned French, which was a new language to me.

1. Describe an experience in which you were “displaced.”

An experience in which I was displaced was  when I started school after going to an all Spanish speaking school.

2. Describe a leave-taking that you have experienced. I left New York and went to Ecuador for two months. There was a big change in the environment because there were dirt roads where I stayed and the living conditions were different.

3. Explore a place that is meaningful to you.

A place that is meaningful to me is the roof of my house. Whenever I need time to think or take a break, I go here to relax. I have went to the roof in times of stress or just to hang out with friends.

IDEA #1 – (Using Prompt 1) FIRST SEMESTER AT BARUCH COLLEGE – I remember feeling displaced when I first started at Baruch college. The whole transition from high school to college was difficult, mindset wise. I had to get use to a whole new surrounding, new people, new tasks, the work load, etc.

IDEA #2 – (Using Prompt 4) DIFFERENT “LANGUAGES” I SPEAK – I speak what you might call as slang English when I am around my friends and I speak a broken down African English when I speak with my mother.

IDEA #3 – (Using Prompt 3) MY NATIVE COUNTRY (GUINEA) – This place means a lot to me because I was born there. Even though I spent all my childhood and most of my lifetime in America, the few times I would visit flush back so much memories. Starting from the food to certain smells that held memories once it was inhale.

For this first assignment,  the three prompts I have in mind to do are

Describe an experience in which I was displaced- I would say coming to America at the age of 9 or 10 was a displacement for me. Similar to that displacement was when I was born in the U.S and went back to Haiti to be raised, but being that I was a newborn I couldn’t remember the feelings that I had toward this move.

Describe a leave-taking experience- There were certain people that I didn’t get to talk to before I departed to come to the US. Since my departure was unexpected at that time, there were conversations that never finished with people that still this day are considered family.

My relationship to language- I want to say I was exposed to different languages since a newborn. English was not my first language, French and Creole were my first languages and even at home I switched up my languages depending on the person I am speaking to.