My journey to USA

Canvas Of Life
As a Palestinian living in the besieged Gaza, I’ve grown up with my people, sharing the same bitterness of the persistence to live a normal life . Deeply, I wanted to draw a canvas of life, yet there were certain missing colors. I started to realize these colors when I was approved for a scholarship that allowed me to spend five glorious weeks in USA with people of different cultures.

In America, I had that experience which made me to believe that dreams do come true. I had a simple dream that wouldn’t seem like a dream for most people. I was always fascinated of the idea of going to a cinema! The thought of watching a movie in front of a big screen; taking a seat next to numerous people, eating popcorn, laughing and crying, thrilled me. When I heard that my friends were planning to go to a cinema I eagerly asked them if we could do that as soon as possible.

When we finally went, I was really happy because we were not just watching a regular film, rather 3D and 4D films. When it was a 3D film, I enjoyed the amazing flying bubbles that I felt I could touch! I almost screamed when the broken pieces were coming or it felt like coming toward me. I wished I had the chance to chase the beautiful butterflies or to pick one of the colorful flowers. However, it was scary to watch the documentary film about dinosaurs. The dinosaurs looked so real that I became really scared; as their faces were so close to mine, they looked as if they were going to swallow me! It felt like I was inside the film. At some point, I felt like I had to hide myself from the dinosaurs and I was unconsciously hitting my friend who was sitting next to me while trying to rescue my life from falling prey to the giant dinosaurs

Things got more real when it was a 4D cinema. I felt wind blew over my face, my chair was rocking because of the explosions in the movie and other effects that would touch me! I never dreamt of these sorts of films before as I thought they are unreachable for me. While watching I noticed that some Americans who were watching along with me were much less amazed as I was. I was interacting with the films madly but they neither shouted nor made wild gestures like I was doing. It felt awkward to me when I realized my dream was one of the options of their daily routine. Then I thought of it differently. I just came up with a conclusion that everyone has his or her unique dreams, and that was one of my dreams.