CE UI Unit 11 - My Life Story
- 1. Creating Opportunity Worldwide My life story: I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. I loved the city, the food and the culture. I made many friends there and had a very happy life. My parents had lived there for many years and didn’t like the hot climate, mosquitoes and roaches. So one day, my parents decided they wanted to move to a cooler climate. They looked in the northeast and didn’t find anything. They finally decided to go back to Atlanta to visit our extended family and so we took a shortcut through the mountains of North Carolina. When we arrived in Asheville, we went to lunch at a small restaurant. The food was fantastic, it was a nice day and the waiter told us that Asheville always had a perfect climate. He also said that there were no roaches or mosquitoes. My parents decided that day to move to Asheville. I didn’t like Asheville at first. The people weren’t as friendly, the food was rotten and the culture was different. I had to adjust. I had left many friends behind in New Orleans and I found it difficult making new friends. People talked differently in Asheville and they laughed at my southern accent. After some time I finally started to enjoy my new life. I made new friends, but they were different from the kinds of friends I had in New Orleans. I went to a difficult school and had to go on Saturdays. This was unusual for an American school and I didn’t have much fun in high school. I had an opportunity to go to University an hour away from Asheville, but I wanted to try something new. So I decided to go to school in another state. I applied to a school in Virginia and was accepted. At first my parents didn’t want me to go, but I told them I would learn a lot more in a new place. When I arrived in Virginia I discovered that some of my friends from New Orleans were also studying there. They had changed quite a bit. They were wild and not very studious. They said that they had been that way since high school. Several of them never graduated from University because they didn’t work hard enough. When I first arrived to University, I thought I wanted to be an accountant, so I took a lot of classes in accounting and maths. I did very badly and decided to study economics. I was bored after a year so I changed my major to Spanish. I loved learning another language and I continued studying it. When I was about to graduate, I got nervous because I thought that I could only be a teacher with a major in Spanish. So, I finished another major in Economics to make sure I had more options. After I graduated, I worked in an office for a while and wasn’t happy. All of my friends were unhappy too. I decided that the only thing that made me happy was learning language, so I decided to teach. I took some courses to be more qualified as a teacher and decided to teach English abroad. Eventually I made it to Tunisia and I’ve been happy ever since. Contributed by <Teacher’s Name> © The British Council, 2005 The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. We are registered in England as a charity.