Seeing my family that I have never seen before was unlike anything I had done before. I had no idea that my trip to Mexico would be as important as it is to me. The experience felt surreal, but it was an important trip to me that will be extremely hard to top.

Near the end of my school year in 2014 my parents were thinking of what we could do during summer vacation, then they ended up sticking with an idea, sending my sister and me to Mexico to meet our family that we had never met before. When our parents told us this we didn’t know how we felt about it, it was a place we had never been to before and it felt so foreign to us. In the end our parents were able to get rid of our worries, but they still existed deep inside us.

After nearly a month had passed the day had come when we had to leave our home for two entire months. We drove to the airport with an unbearable amount of nervousness. We went through everything we had to at the airport and then it was waiting time until the plane arrived. It was the most suspenseful moment we had felt in our lives. After some time, the plane was ready for us to get on, so it was the final good bye, and it was hard to do, but there wasn’t any going back so we did it holding back tears. Now we just had to wait for what was to come.

After two hours of being on the plane we landed, and it was time to start seeing family. The people that met us were one of my aunts, one of my uncles, and my grandma from my mom’s side of the family. We were going to spend a lot of time with my grandma during the trip. After meeting them they decided to take us to my uncle’s house to take a break for the day. Although my sister seemed fine most of the time once we got there she started to feel sad and cried because of the realization that two months could feel like a long time away from home. There wasn’t much that we could do but give her time to cheer up. The next day my sister felt better so we left to our main destination Tampico, on a bus where most of my family lived, so we had to say good bye to my uncle because he lived in Monterrey, where the airport was.           

The bus made it to Tampico after a few hours and that was when we met the people that were some of the best people we had ever met, one of my uncles and his family, my uncle was named Arturo. After greeting them we could tell that we were going to build a very important relationship with them. After going to their house to drop our luggage off we immediately went to go meet the other main people we would spend time with, my grandparents on my dad’s side of the family. Meeting so many people felt overwhelming at first, but then I realized that it wasn’t bad at all. Then after that day nearly every other day we went with some of the family that we were staying with to go see around Mexico or meet even more people. We got to see breathtaking scenes like incredible beaches, Mexico was nothing like we thought it would be. We also got to see how people there lived their daily lives and we got to experience what it felt like to live with a lower income family. My uncle Arturo’s shower had no shower head, so you had to fill a bucket with water and heat it up to take a shower. Although it seems weird to do that it wasn’t bad and forced you to save water, so I learned good life lessons.

After having an incredible experience, before we knew it, it was time to leave. This was not easy to do at all. Fist we had to say good bye to everyone that we stayed with in Tampico, this was the worst part of the trip my sister and I did our best to not cry, but we still did because we knew that we wouldn’t see them for a long while. Then we got on the bus back to Monterrey and we got to see our uncle again and we stayed with him for one night then it was time to go to the airport. Although we were happy to be going back home, we still wanted to stay in Mexico longer because that also became our home. When we met up with our parents again we immediately started telling them about our great experience that we will never forget.

 This was a once in a life time experience that can’t be compared to anything because you only meet your relatives for the first time once, so I cherished my time there. This place that seemed so different and strange at first became a second home that I loved and would like go back to again and again.