America has been home to many cultures from different countries. I am one of those people that experienced moving from a whole other country, Iraq, and understanding the way of life here. Some of the main changes here were the financial differences and cultural values. The financial differences were mostly the change in the value of money. The value in Iraq 1,310.00 dinar is equal to one U.S dollar. One other major thing we had to get used to was the culture being diverse and not having that much structure on the community.
My dad was the perfect fit for this topic because he was the person most affected by the major change of financial difficulties and cultural change. He was most affected by these changes because he has been through all the conflicts of life and the world alone, and he understands the pros and cons of live in both countries and many more.
He said, “The paychecks over there are less because the government was financing the majority of living expenses but here the paychecks are higher, but you are needed to pay for everything. ¨
Understanding and managing money was even harder because going from just paying for simple things like rent and gas to having to pay for everything was tough and even though the paychecks were better the expenses were higher.
He mentioned,¨It was easy over there because we already knew how to work things like housing, financial expenses, and even how to interact but here it was very hard because we didn’t know how to manage our money to spread it all out to things that were indeed. ¨
Life was easy over there, not just because it was our culture but also because we had already built our life there. We settled down and got used to living over there, so just imagine coming to a whole other country without knowing anything, not even knowing how to speak the language but also having to start from scratch.
He said, ¨Here culture was very easy going compared to Iraq, where most things are very structured. Also, it was very hard to move here without knowing what to do, how to find jobs or how to get housing, school and education, and even basic living. ¨
I’ve always wondered how it was to move from my home country to here and with all the information I received from this interview with my father helped me understand how difficult it was to move here just so we can have a better future and that even though I was a child and understood a little bit of the big change that he went through so much just to keep us living and for that I will forever be grateful.
