The year of 1998, my mother, Megan Huang came to the United States from China to continue her education in NC State. The journey truly began when she first saw the US in the small circular window of the airplane. Adrenaline rushed through her as the plane touched the ground. Looking at the bright lights of California, she thought to herself: “this is just the beginning of accomplishing my life’s dream”.
The challenges of this new life loomed ahead in the future. The first one presented itself the moment my mother disembarked from the plane in North Carolina. She had no mode of transport. How was she going to go to school? Life in NC was not like the one she had in China. There were no buses that dropped her off at home. Fellow Chinese students who had been in the US longer helped her with this problem. Once a week, my mother would get the chance to buy the weeks’ groceries. Every day, she carpooled with someone to school. However, this was just the beginning of her problems.
Although she had studied English in China, Megan Huang could hardly understand a word in class. The teachers all spoke very fast. Straining to understand, she eventually started recording the lessons on tape and listened to them repeatedly after class. Presentations were a whole new problem. Megan had been struggling to understand English; however, speaking the language was an entirely different issue. The success of her first seminar relied solely on not being asked questions from the audience, and luckily, no one did. Although she had passed this time, next time might be different.
Many evenings and nights, Megan was in the science lab. Most days, she would not be able to eat fresh cooked meals. During the weekends, she would cook the weeks’ worth of food and bring leftovers for the weekdays or eat takeout. This was the how my mother had spent her first years in graduate school.
Presently, Megan Huang and her family are still living in NC. In her words: “my original dream wasn’t fully fulfilled, but I am living a different kind of dream”.
