Goodbye Chunky Rice - Personal Essay

Goodbye Chunky Rice

   It was midsummer 2011. I had just graduated from high school. It was time for me to start applying for universities. I had couple of choices in terms of choosing where to continue my future education. My number one choice was going to the States and study there. My other options were either stay in my home country, which is Tajikistan or go to Istanbul, in Turkey.

Since it was very hard to get a US visa, I had to have another couple of good alternatives, in case they wouldn’t approve my student visa. Early August I applied for a F1 visa, which is a student visa, luckily my visa was approved.

     I never forget the way how I got my visa. I was very nervous applying for my visa, thinking in case my visa won’t get approved I would be really disappointed. I really wanted to go to the States and pursue my degree there. That’s why prior going to the interview I had already asked some of my friends how the process of submitting the papers and getting called for the interview works inside the embassy. They all told me that there are three windows where in the first one you pay the visa fee, the second one you submit all of your documents and the third one they get your fingerprints. After you are done with all the three windows, after five or ten minutes they call your name for the interview in a small room. The day for my interview reached. I went to the embassy, I passed the security check and walked in to the room. Since I had done my research already, I was expecting nothing different but the same exact procedure as I mentioned above. I did the first two windows and the third one they got my fingerprints and in the same exact window this really nice woman probably in her mid-thirties started asking me questions such as why I wanted to go to the States and how long was I going to stay there.  In my head I was assuming that she is just asking because of her curiosity, but when she said, “Congratulations! Your visa is approved, come and get it tomorrow.”. For a while I was thinking that it was a joke, because I was expecting my interview in a room, and the third window was supposed to take my fingerprints only. At the end of the day it didn’t matter to me if the interview was in third window or in a room. The main thing I got my visa. And that was the best surprise ever. Then I found out that the day my interview was, they changed the process of the interview.

   Now that I have my visa in my hands, the story that I will be telling will start resembling to Chunky Rice story.

   I have had a lot of good and unforgettable moments and memories with my friends and my family, just like anybody else. As we get older, our life, our goals in life will start changing time by time. I was very excited about my then upcoming journey in life. But at the same time I was sad leaving my family and friends behind.

      As much as I wanted my family next to me in the States, I knew it was beyond any possibility. Regarding the cartoon, I was the turtle who had to leave and my friends and my family were the mouse who had to stay. The scene where the turtle asks the mouse to leave with him saying “But I don’t want to leave you behind. I want to take you with me”, really resonates me. Because I didn’t want to leave my family and my friends behind, but I had to, for a better future. Even though the turtle and the mouse wanted to be together, they had to get apart for their own good. And as it is shown in the cartoon there is a new day, after they get apart.  A new day, to me means better future.