“I was doing some problems and one of the boys at the class asked me for my pencil, and my head figured out a question in English out of nowhere. I didn’t even know if it was correct but during Spanish class I was learning the basics in English, I said ‘For what?’ the guy didn’t understand what i said and he had more time than me in the country and school but my friend did and translated to him”

          That day is still in my head because even though I didn’t know english that deeply, I made a sentence on my own and i didn’t even know if it was correct I only knew the meaning of two words in english and I connected them and out of that I got a sentence. Those days in that school in NJ were pretty difficult but the friends I made there somehow made the time to go fast and I also don’t remember a lot of it. Even though I do remember one day I was trying to talk to my math teacher and she was white as a ghost and she did not know spanish like at all so me trying to talk to her wasn’t a great idea, but i was trying to tell her something about another student and in my mind she was getting what I was saying but then she used to make that confused face and then I just realized I wasn’t saying the right thing in the right way so I remember that i left, just like that. 

          The moment I started to understand and talk English was in 9th grade, already a highschooler so pretty late but hey I started school in 8th grade so…not my fault. By that time I had already moved here to NY. I remember that I used to be so bad at history class because there were a lot of readings, but then time passed and I got to be the first one in the whole class to finish an assignment. Meanwhile everybody was confused, even people whose first language was english. Of course I checked it with the teacher and she said it was perfect so yeah i was so happy and I felt so smart when others were asking me how I got the questions and where.

          My entire journey learning english i be around 2 types of people, Black and hispanics so I don’t have that “Standard english” the english that mostly white people uses, I have black english convinced with my dominican accent so I kind of a mess but people gets tu understand me, sometimes they don’t and I recognize that it’s because I get scared and i feel how my heart starts to speed up and it’s because i’m not comfortable and i feel like others are going to judge me I laugh about my english, to be honest sometimes I just decided to stay quiet but that’s not the right choice, I need to speak more, practice my english and if I say something wrong i love i genuinely love when people corrects me and they explain me why they right of course in a nice way.