A favorite story about adapting to life in America:

She was a police commissioner's daughter and he was the President's bodyguard. Thus, began the story of my parents. A few years after my mother immigrated to America, she returned to Korea for her summer vacation from college. Upon a visit with her father's old colleagues, she met the President's bodyguard and thus my own story began. After a two month courtship and a year of air-mailed letters, they married. A few months later, the Korean President and a group of his bodyguards were assassinated. Fortunately, my father and his group of bodyguards did not work on that day. With the overwhelming grief from losing his mentors, his best friends and faith in the system, he decided to leave Korea and join my mother and her family in America. Upon his arrival to America, he had been shocked with the significant change in lifestyle. He used to be a bodyguard with significant power and presence, but his immigration had brought him immense burdens as he struggled to learn a foreign language in an American college, while trying to support his wife who was also attending college at the time, and trying to raise a new born child. Thus, he felt as though that when he left Korea, not only did he leave behind his own family and life, he had left his pride as well. 22 years later, I wonder has my father actually adapted to life in America or is he still trying? He has learned this new language, but has not forgotten his own, created his own customs by interweaving those of America and those of Korea, and raised my brother and I with Korean-American ideals and morals. Throughout his experience, he has made his life in America a creation of his own- a mixture of his old life with the new. I do believe that rather than just adapting to life in American, he is constantly creating his evolving life in America. Despite his hardships, America has kept its promise when he was granted the opportunity and ability to become a self-made-man. In that, I truly feel that his pride is restored.

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