Mashkevich

When my family initially immigrated to the United States, they chose to live here because they had family friends living in Newark, NJ. I was born here, and my family lived in an apartment building near a park where my mom would take me for walks. My mom and I made friends with a few other toddlers in the area, but I have no recollection of anything that happened here, as we moved out just before I turned two years old.

My family moved here from Irvington, NJ when I was two years old, and I've lived here ever since. My first memories are from here, and our house has come a long way since we moved in - with frequent renovations and improvements since 2000. It was a big adjustment at first, as we moved from an apartment building into our own house. However, we found that it was a quieter area than our old neighborhood, which was comforting. As I was growing up, my mom and grandma would frequently take me to the park to play sports, and I began attending the summer day camp in the neighborhood when I was in 3rd grade. I attended local schools until 6th grade, when I began commuting to middle school via school bus. My commuting continued in high school, and I came to understand my parents' frequent complaints about the MTA. All this time, my parents had been commuting to work in the city, so we had gotten accustomed to seeing each other in the morning for breakfast and then dinner in the evening. In high school, I began making friends in other parts of Brooklyn, and got my driver's license as quickly as I could to alleviate the pains of commuting across the borough. Overall, I've been able to stay in touch with my neighborhood thanks to a few childhood friends that I still talk to, and occasional football games in the park on the weekends.