[Music]
My mom came here when she was seven years old to New York.
My grandfather, my maternal grandfather
worked for the embassy.
So he was posted in New York, So they all came to New York
and she's been here ever since.
So 40 something years, I think.
And my dad, he came here for college,
an engineer in San Jose.
So he came, he studied and he just decided to live here.
And that's my story.
It starts off with my dad moving here for his job
back in 2003
and that just left me and my mom back in the Philippines
um for about two years before we moved
to join suit with him and just join I mean just like live
with him and my grandpa was already here prior,
but I don't really know what year he moved.
And yeah,
We just been here since 2005.
Back in Philippines we were taught English as a second language, right?
And I thought that
coming here to the US
I wouldn't really have a problem with that.
However, it was really hard because like
all everybody around me, like literally,
everybody spoke fluent English and I'm
still just like I know some words that
they're saying but it's really like
more complex just trying to like
decipher what they're saying and all that
and it's um, it was hard going through that process,
but eventually I
I like learn to get along with it to
like conform myself to the society.
So my family comes from Mexico both my mom and my dad.
And they came over in the 90s and
they met each other like
uh four years after they came over, and
they met each other at work, and then
they got together, and they had me and yeah.
Both of my parents were born in Egypt
and lived there most of their lives all the way until college.
They got married in Egypt
and then my father decided that he wanted to come to America because
it was the land of opportunity and dreaming and all that.
My mother, they were both obviously like
very torn to leave their family but they,
left everything to come here so that me and my
siblings could have a better life.
My parents immigrated from
Vietnam to here during the Vietnam war.
So my dad, he came originally from China
in Guangdong near Hong Kong and
during the Vietnam war, he escaped from
China through Vietnam and all the way
through Malaysia as a vote person.
So he went through a lot with his family
and his four older sisters and his two parents.
My dad and the rest of his sisters
decided they wanted to go to America
and really let their kids live the American dream
and he was very adamant about wanting to stay in America
seeing it as this wonderful country full of opportunities.
So he went here when he was 21
and he had to lie about his age to be able to go to an American high school.
He went to San Jose high school which is very close by
and he also graduated from San Jose state
and he really took his education seriously,
because he really wanted to provide for his family.
And after everything was great he had a good job.
He went back to Vietnam and that's where he met my mom.
And my mom immigrated here left everything she knew
back in Vietnam and here we are with three kids and a happy family.