martes, 15 de febrero de 2011

An Irish Diary!

[My family before we took the Steamboat]
Today is June,1948
It is sad to see how we lived in Ireland, in such bad conditions. We had to share the food that we had, so that it lasted for the rest of the week. My mother did not eat sometimes to give us more portions of food to eat. We lived in a village where we worked all of the days in a farm to obtain at least $2 dollars per each 4 hours. When the potato rot took place in Ireland, there were no farms left so that meant that there wasn't money. Our neighbors died of starvation and that was when my father decided to take us to the United States.
My family took all of our belongings that could be stored in our luggage. Our village was near the sea, so we walked to catch a steamboat, but first our father bought the tickets with the money we obtained from our things that my mother sold. It took a couple of months to arrive to the U.S., we were excited yet sad because we missed our country and friends. We stopped at Ellis Island near New York and we were interrogated and inspected, but we did not have any problems and continued on.
It was hard to find a nice town to live in, since Americans started to be a little harsh to us, I always thought that they didn't liked us. We found a community full of Irish people and we decided to stay there to live. It felt good to be near people of your same culture. My dad tried to look for jobs but he was rejected, since he was an immigrant. He looked for many jobs but he did not found one, but my mother gave him an idea to own a laundry. The laundry turned to be very successful and as the years passed, my family owned a chain of laundries around New York.
It felt so relaxing to have a good life and being able to eat well. I just wished that everyone in Ireland had the same opportunity that we had in the United States. Me and my brothers went to school and had an excellent education, we also met many American friends in school. I lived in New York for many years and worked at a clothing factory. I am so glad that my father decided to move to the U.S., because it helped us to be successful in our lives.
-Anonymous (Irish)

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