carrying a dream of graduating in USA, we leave our country, our family, our friends... and then pack our bags to get along a journey... a journey of change, properity, experience, and many more... during which we discover ourself and understand ourself more... at times, sadness, hopelessness, helplessness, etc... comes along but we stand still and get over with and bring the joy, happiness, excitement in our life... these yrs away from home teaches us alot...

and so did Abishek Narsingh Rayamajhi from loras college who graduated in 2009... looking back at those moments from getting a visa at US consular office to the moment he sat down to write this article...

SOURCE: Hamroaawaz.com

Abishek Narsingh Rayamajhi

Loras College, IO “2009″

July 14th, 2005 has been erased from my memory. Sometimes I wonder if I ever lived through that day. I walked out of the American Consular’s office, chest bursting with joy. The rest of that day has been lost in the blissful abyss of that moment. I try and remember why I was so happy that day. The document I held in my hand meant that in a month, I’d be leaving my home, my family, my friends, my country for a strange yet all too familiar land.

I would like to help people with disabilities like mine (diagnosed as “bilateral sensory neural hearing loss”) find their hope too, who knows they may be able to catch their ray and then discover that life is beautiful after all.

The document in my hand reflected my past and promised a future that I knew would be hard and daunting. But that document also meant that I was from that moment independent; and free to form my own destiny. That alone is a vague consolation for my irate happiness that day. America to me had always been a myth. It to me symbolized a promise land. A land of dreams and opportunity, were people were judged by the weight of their character and not by their social bearings. It is a land that promised prosperity, to anyone willing to flirt with destiny. I obliged and a month later laden with brimful of dreams, I arrived in Dubuque with a future full of opportunities and unexpected experiences.

Four years in Loras College has shaped me to be a good reflective thinker, active learner, ethical decision maker and a responsible contributor to the local community.

Four years, many paychecks, classes and a revolution later, I sit here describing my most memorable experience from my time in Loras College. And yet I wonder if any such experience or transition into American culture has taken place.

America to be honest hasn’t been unexpected. The big cars, high standard of living, greasy food, the unyielding prosperity is what everybody writes about. But didn’t we expect it in the first place? What have I seen here that I hadn’t already in a movie, or read in a book? You have to only take a look around the world to notice that half the world is Americanized. So what is there to transit into? We were already half Americans before we came here in the first place. A transition is for when you are thrown into a completely new culture, where your human instincts are your only alibi.

Yet it wouldn’t be justified to claim that no memorable experience or transition has taken place. I look back at my 4 years here and the feelings that I went through, and realize that I am not the same person that landed at Chicago that windy August midnight. Everything I go through takes me past these rain drenched streets, to back home where my heart lies.

It is funny that I had to travel half way around the world into a foreign land to realize how beautiful, pure and untouched my country is. That has been the irony for I have transitioned not into an American but more into a Nepali.

I see big cars zooming by and miss those noisy streets back home, the horns, the commotion, and those cows that wandered into the streets. I see nice houses and lavish lawns and remember those huts, those slums where people lived in utter poverty but love. I hear church bells toll and remember those frantic chimes of temple bells, the elderly worshiping at dawn......... read more at hamroaawaz.com