Min Jee’s Migration Story
Trying to vaguely remember the moment I came to the United States, I don’t think I even remember my parents telling me that we were moving there – possibly because I was only five years old. Leaving the comfortable environment of South Korea, my parents decided to take us to a foreign land filled with opportunities for our sake. After a long 16 hours on the airplane, we finally arrived.
It would have been hard for my parents to find a house or apartment to live in as soon as we arrived, so we lived at our family friends’ house in Long Island. The only thing I could recollect from our time there is the elder siblings of the household trying to teach me English through workbooks and coloring pages.
Before September arrived, our family moved to New York. Our cousins from New Jersey helped us find an apartment. The first, and only, neighborhood we resided in was Murray Hill. Our apartment was half of the size of the family house we live in today, and there was a funny smell to it too. My parents also told me the door was so weak and the hinges were rusty that they were scared someone might break in in the middle of the night. The majority of the neighborhood was Asian oriented, so it was easier for my parents to communicate and get around to places. My father had to get a job as a cashier in a supermarket and my mother obtained a job at a nail salon. As for my sister and I, we went to school for the first time in America.
Soon after, my parents decided to move to a better neighborhood, for Murray Hill wasn’t the best neighborhood to live in. We moved to Flushing, into a more stable and larger apartment. The neighborhood was still Asian oriented but it was more diverse than the area we’ve lived in before. My father switched his job as a cashier to a truck driver, delivering products between the supermarket and a farm. School was another foreign land within the foreign land my sister and I were already in. The rules were different, the language was different, and the people were different. Luckily, we learned quickly and were able to adapt quickly.
Years passed, and my sister entered the 6th grade. Already 6 years were spent in that one apartment in Flushing, but it wasn’t long enough. My parents didn’t want my sister to go to the junior high school right next to our apartment because it was known as a bad school. They looked and looked until they found a family house near another junior high school. It was the first family house our family ever lived in so I loved it. I hated using the elevators up to high floors and seeing doors after doors in every hallway. The neighborhood was quiet, unlike the past areas we’ve been in. And another big difference was its diversity. The neighborhood was filled with various ethnics of people. My parents slowly started speaking more English than they used to. They were learning from the work places by interacting with their customers. It took them a while, but we started to become more and more like a Korean-American family, rather than a Korean family.
Our family moved once again, which is where we live today, and the area is similar to the previous one. I can interact with my parents in both Korean and English, which makes it a lot easier for my sister and I. My father set up his own florist business, which he continues to run today, and my mother as his manager.
It’s been thirteen years since my family and I have came to this country. We didn’t give up all of our own culture, but assimilated our culture with that of New York. The life of being an “immigrant” continues. But I say, we’re now all New Yorkers.
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