went2mars asked: thank you for the link!(:
Any time!
You can’t hide anything from an Aquarius. They know everything, even if they don’t let on.
(Source: lnk.co, via bearingwater)
Aquarians feel very helpless when they realize that they’ve grown emotional towards a person.
(via theastrologyzone)
Hardship Essay
“Ana will not be held back because she is smart enough to do this!” declared my parents.
It was the first day of second grade. My first time in a U.S. school. The first time I realized life wasn’t easy.
Having just arrived from Mexico, my mother, two brothers, and I joined my father in the American Dream. My parents were quick to enroll us in school. Soon they realized that my moving to different schools so often in Mexico would cause me to be held back; however, their Mexican pride wouldn’t allow it.
After learning to read small words in a first-grade classroom every morning, I then went into a second grade class to read paragraphs in the afternoons. A fifth-grade student would visit me before lunch to teach me the alphabet, the days of the week, and the months. My homework was twice that of my classmates; the pressure was beyond words.
School work required much help from my parents. My father used a dictionary to translate the homework directions from English to Spanish. My mother continued teaching me the numbers and how to tell time. While my brothers had fun watching television, I sat in the kitchen table redoing my alphabet until my mother found it to be neat.
At school, children from both the first and second grade would ask me why I didn’t know how to read. Ignorant of the pain they caused with their questions, they taunted me with their curiosity. In my second grade class, I was always the only one not to raise my hand to answer the easiest questions. During recess, when everyone went to play, I would sit with my teacher and review simple math problems that I could not solve. I felt like I was kept behind from a normal childhood.
One day I arrived home in tears.
“I can’t do it! This is really hard! The other kids don’t have to do it!” I complained.
My father knelt down to face me and said, “You are not like all those other kids. You are different, and you can do this. Tell me, do you come from dumb parents?”
I shook my head, too young to realize the meaning behind those words.
Now, years later, my father is no longer around. My mother is too busy at work to be involved in my education. I am in the toughest classes my school can offer, and I must dedicate much time to them. Piles of homework lie around me, and I think that I will give up because I cannot do it; however, those words my father once spoke have sunk in with real meaning. Not giving up and working harder than those around me is what defines me.
A Challenge
“Bano…bano…how do you say bano?” I thought to myself in Spanish while shaking my leg so much it caught my teacher’s attention.
“Would you like to go to the restroom,” my teacher asked.
On the way to the restroom I repeated the word. Restroom. While promising myself I would know it next time and avoid the snickers it brought from my classmates. Arriving from Mexico a few months before, I would ask my step-father to teach me the basic, necessary words to get through the school day; however, they would not stay in my head for long when I was faced with unknown faces. In the private catholic school I attended, ESL classes were not offered. Even though I had received a very generous scholarship to attend such an honorable school my parents moved me to a public elementary school to attend ESL classes. Soon I was introduced to children my age with my same problem where friends were easily and quickly made.
After enduring the snickering from my classmates in my old, catholic school I had become a new person. No longer the happy and out going girl, I rarely talked to my “American” classmates, afraid they would laugh at me. However, after two months in ESL classes I soon grasped the basics and was allowed to stay in my classroom instead of having to leave during art time. Determined to perfect my new language, often I would make my step-father sit in the car with me as I read “Curious George” out loud. When he arrived home a little later than usual my mother would ask why it took him so long.
“Ana wanted me to correct her on her pronunciation of ‘Curious George,’” he would explain to my mother.
In class, despite the fear of snickering, I would volunteer to read out loud. Most of the time my teacher would refuse to pick me since my accent was too heavy for the other kids to understand and follow my reading; however, there were times I got lucky. Through the year of my education my English has greatly improved. Now, able to read out loud and talk without a heavy accent, my self esteem and confidence has greatly improved. The confidence gained has allowed me to be in the most challenging courses my school can offer. Knowing that anything is possible with determination and perseverance, rarely am I kept from what I want.
Having lived through the challenge of learning not only a new language, but about the strong person within me too, has left me with the dream of allowing more children the opportunity given to me. Planning to major in Clinical Psychology and Spanish, I plan to work with Elementary ESL kids learn the beauty of a new language, the achievement of dream, and most importantly…the meaning of determination.
Looking out the window
Breeze blows through the trees,
hidden memory escapes my mind.
No longer a time of summer,
They invade like deadly fall.
Thunder and cold showers,
Awake the pain within.
No longer silent winter,
Spring revives the past
Looking out the window,
Past the tress and clouds.
See what once existed,
Running through my life.
Mirth and grief become one,
Life and death remain two.
For past remains behind,
Yet events are summed up.
Once there were tears,
Now there is strength.
Once they were dreams,
Now transformed to reality.
Looking out the window,
Past the trees and clouds.
See what once existed,
Running through my life.
