When I went abroad, I was 14. I didn’t know anything about this country. To me, America was another world. I had known my native city, Shanghai, the way you know an old friend. Back in Shanghai, there was a grocery market opposite my house that was always really dark and so  dirty that I had to wear very old sneakers to go into it. People would just throw the vegetables that they didn’t want in the street. The officer who was in charge of the street always argued with these people. To make matters worse, the market didn’t have any air conditioners or heaters, so on hot or cold days, it felt horrible there. I hated that place. But in America, people usually do their grocery shopping at a supermarket where it is bright and there is always a strong heating and air conditioning system. It is so comfortable to be in there. The clean and fresh vegetables are on the tables. People can help themselves.There are no arguments, no dim lights, but also, there is no feeling of home.      
    

I remembered when I was little, a lot of my relatives had already gone abroad, unlike other people who had never heard of going abroad when they were young. I had known about this rite of passage since I was seven. One day, when I was in eighth grade, my mom and I were on our way home from shopping and we met an old friend’s mom. She said her daughter, a high school student, was in Canada and had been there for two years. Even though members of my family had done this, we were surprised that someone else in our circle had, too, because we had known this girl for many, many years and couldn’t imagine that she was now in another country. Typically, the kids who go abroad are good students, but they are dissatisfied with their school or the Chinese style of education, though this girl had always seemed so satisfied. Her mom said she was so much happier in Canada, that she was learning what she wanted and she had a lot of time to focus on her interests. “Although I paid a lot for her to go abroad, it’s worth it. There are so many things that you can’t buy in your life, like time and happiness. So I am happy that I gave her the chance to manage her own life.”  In China, you can spend thousands of hours on reading, writing, and memorization  and never spend any time participating in projects, arts or sports. This girl, though, was having fun and learning at the same time.

When I came home that night, I started to think about going abroad because this practice was very typical in my family, and I knew my parents had already assumed that I would, too, even though it hadn’t seemed real to me. What they had been thinking about was to send me out when I was, at least a high school student, because at that point I would at least know how to take care of myself and have better problem-solving skills. Surprisingly, from that day on, I couldn’t even think about anything else except getting myself to America right away.
      

Like most kids, I had rarely questioned the methods by which we were taught. Everyone had to learn the same thing. We couldn’t choose any of our own classes and had never even heard of an “elective.”We couldn’t do a lot of things we wanted to do, like follow our hearts or individual interests. Everyone had to learn the exact same material in the same classes, whether or not they excelled, struggled, loved or hated it. There was no individuality. We had  no voice, no power to fight. All we could do was accept it. From elementary school on, we were like little learning robots. After years of rote learning, everyone seemed to be the same by the time they graduate from high school. They don’t know where to go or what they like to do, because all they have done is just follow the road that was laid out to them. They took the food that the schools gave them, but they never figured out what they liked to eat.

Suddenly, I started thinking about my childhood friend and realized that my life could be different. She had gone abroad at my age and, according to her mother, she had what sounded to me like incredible freedom -- she could take art, band, even cooking (she learned to make great desserts!), whatever she wanted to learn. I remembered the days when we were together;  she was so close to me, so like me. But now she was so far away, her life so different, and probably  so much better.

I spent hours, day and night, researching how to go abroad, scanning online message boards, gathering tips and ideas about other people’s experiences. I worked really hard on my English. Finally I skyped an interview with one of the schools and I thought the teacher there really liked me. But finally I found out that I didn’t get in.
   

It was already August, so I gave up on my dream to get into a school that year. By chance, my mom met someone on the Internet who said she was serving as a host family for international students in New Jersey. She was willing to send my information to a famous Catholic school in that area for us. Although we didn’t think we would get into the school because it was already August, that woman was so eager to help us that we tried. Surprisingly, without even doing a Skype interview, the school accepted me. I still thought that leaving was a dream.
   

The catch was that school was starting in two weeks, but I still had a bunch of loose ends to deal with. I had to get my visa and get packed; I had to be prepared to be away from home for ten months! How could I even begin to think of what and how much stuff I should bring? I was so busy during those days but, when I look back now, I have to admit that those might have been the best days of my life up until that point. I didn’t have to worry about school and all I could think of is how great my life would be. I started to imagine the school in NJ, the place I would live and how much freedom I would have. I was so excited that I couldn’t even wait to leave my family.
       

My parents and I started to buy stuff every day. We put all my winter and summer clothes in a suitcase. Every day, I woke up knowing that I was one step closer to America, but I wasn’t nervous at all. One morning, I thought I must be a very cold-blooded person because I didn't even think I would be homesick. 
  

Then the day of my departure came. We took a mini bus to the airport and I spent the drive looking at all the streets and thinking about how I was going to leave this place, my lifelong home. The bus got stuck in a traffic jam on the bridge that connects two sides of the YangPu river. All the cars were stopped. I saw buses full of busy people, some sleeping, some on their phones and some of whom -- checking their watches with looks of frustration -- seemed worried about getting somewhere on time. They all worked here, lived here, grew up here, just like me, we were all a part of this city, with all of our similar memories.

Suddenly, I started to have a feeling of sadness. I started staring out the window, trying to memorize all these views, these buildings and streets, these busy people. They were a part of me. This place is like a mother figure to me. After we arrived at the airport, I checked my bags. Finally, we got to the point at the gate where I needed to go on by myself. I thought I was going to be okay -- remember how strong I was when I was at home? But I was wrong. I saw my mom trying so hard to hide her red eyes. I turned and walked so fast to leave my parents. When I set down my suitcase and heard the wheels rolling on the marble floor, I couldn’t hold in my tears any longer. It was so busy and loud there, but I felt so alone. I didn’t even turn my head for a last look at my parents because  I didn’t want them to see my tears. I wanted them to think I was okay and ready to walk by myself during the next few months.

As I got off the airplane after the 15-hour flight to Newark, NJ, and walked through the gate, the first thing I saw were people. People with different colors of hair, people with different colored eyes, unlike in China’s airport  where most of the people are Asian. Some people were talking on their phones and some were with their families, smiling. Suddenly, it hit me: the place where I stand right now is in another country. I have to use another language that  I wasn’t really familiar with here. My parents used to be the ones who were in charge of me, but now I realized that everything was  on me. I would have  to plan everything -- what to eat, what to do, what was the right way to live -- because no one was going to help me to live in this country,  a country I never knew before. It was six in the evening, sunset . The sky was mixed with orange, red and blue. It was so beautiful here, unlike in Shanghai, where most days I only saw two colors -- grey and white. And I was alone. Here. I will never forget the sky from that day.
      

When I went back home with my host family and saw all of the children there, I finally started to realize that this is my new home -- I wasn’t just a tourist here. I didn’t know what would happen the next day, but I promised myself that I would try to be brave and do better each day. The first day of school was pretty exciting, since I had never been to an American school before. Everything seemed new and fresh to me. The schedule and classes were so different from what they were in China. When I was at my old school in China, we stayed in the same classroom with the same group of thirty people, and that would go on until we graduated. We didn’t walk around between classes and lunches, teachers did. We did everything in our own classroom. We sat in the same pair of chairs and desk, unless the teacher made some changes. But here, everyone walked around between classes, and we had a specific lunch time for our grade to go to lunch at the cafeteria. Everyone had a locker where they kept their books. In China, we kept everything in our desk. Everything was so different and so interesting to me at the time.
     

Fortunately, I made some friends during the first day of school and I was pretty proud of myself since I knew my English was not that good and they still wanted to be friends with me. The only hard time for me was during religion class because I didn’t know anything the teacher talked about, but every day I went home and read the textbook over and over again, using a translator to translate everything that I didn’t get at the class. After a while, I felt much comfortable there.
       

I remembered that my freshman year was the best year because the only thing I was struggling with was my language problem, but with the help from the Americans, the language barrier wasn’t that hard for me to overcome. I was having a lot of fun in band class during that time. In band, I met a girl named Jazzmin. She was just starting to learn piano, and luckily I had been playing piano since I was four, so my band teacher asked me to teach her. It was the best part of my life back then. During that time, I was insecure, because I had just arrived, I was afraid I would say something wrong. Most of the time, I felt like I could understand people better than I could respond to them. It made others think that I was a really quiet and shy girl, but I had always been very extroverted. The truth is that I just didn’t know how to respond to them with my true feeling and thoughts.

My conversations with Jazzmin, an optimistic and encouraging junior with bright red hair, however, were different -- she helped me so much. Every day, I used my poor English to teach her piano and practice English with her. Actually, it was pretty awkward at the beginning. I remembered that there were days when I tried to share something with her, but I always had problems with word tense. (In Mandarin, we would use an entirely different word instead of changing verb tenses.) So she always asked, “Has that passed or is it coming?” But I was trying so hard to not be afraid and to express myself in any way I could. Time flew. Three months later, I started to have a lot of friends. With the help from teachers and some other students, I felt like I fit into the environment very quickly, especially after the band concert, when almost everyone in school started to know me or at least know what I looked like. More and more people started to talk to me. We played a lot of music every day and had several concerts. I felt like I wouldn’t be happier if I was at any other place but here. My friend’s mom was right. There were a lot of things that you can’t buy in your life, like time and happiness. Like what I had now.
     

I didn’t get very homesick my first year, although a lot of people thought I would. At the time I was so young and so excited to accept everything new around me. Family is something I thought would always be there so that I didn’t even think about them. All I missed were my friends.There were times that I was doing something fun with my friends in America, and all I wanted to do was share those fun things with my friends in China. I started to imagine how they would react after they heard my stories about this place.There are times in my dreams when I think my friends and family are just hours away from me and I could just take a bus to meet them. But when I wake, I realize we are thousands of miles apart. None of them are here with me. But it’s okay. This is the process of growing up. When I came here as an international students, I knew that I was going to leave all of my family members and friends.There wasn’t going to be anyone to accompany me. I knew I was going to be independent. I knew that I would fall down probably thousands of times before I could fit into the environment. I knew I had to start all over again, as if I were six or seven years old, when the world was new. I and many of the other international students in their respective countries, had to learn everything from the beginning. We had to learn how to grow up by ourselves. We all went abroad alone at the age of 14 or 15, when most young people struggle with friends and school. For us, most of these problems had to be overcome very early, at an accelerated pace, and without our parents to guide us. Most people would consider this to be a bad thing, but we consider this to be a good thing, something that has made us stronger and given us the ability to look at the world through other people’s eyes. We have stumbled more than other people, but, with each stumble, we pick up a piece of treasure that we will carry through our lives.