Cause and effect

Solee Kim

ESL 100

Cause and Effect Essay 2 

A Changed Life

                   My mother has always regretted the life that she chose, but  my family and she are thankful for her choice at the same time. Between 1980 and 2000, Koreans experienced one of the most important periods in its history. Koreans tried to stage a coup to change the regime. It is called the 5.18 democratic movement, and it was the big reason why Korea’s economy was able to develop so quickly as a leading industrialized country. Consequently, a lot of jobs disappeared due to the rapid technological development in Korea. Many people had to change their jobs for the future, and my parents were part of that new generation. As a result, my mother decided to move to the suburbs from the capital to start a new business with my father. 

                The changed environment was one of the biggest effects on my family, especially my mother because of the difference between the suburb and the city. There was a huge gap at that time between life in the city and suburb. Living in the suburbs after living in the city in Korea at that time was like time travel to the past. The suburb lacked infrastructure compared to the city. My mother had to go to the city for a better hospital, and going to the other towns was not easy. In addition, the suburb has a different social community, even people’s personalities were different. Many people liked to gossip, spread rumors and had too much interest in others because of the small community. There were no secrets in my mother’s new neighborhood. People treated my mother like a stranger and intruder, and they were envious of my parents who were young business owners who built their building for business and house as soon as they came to town. My mother had a hard time adapting to the new changed environment and putting up with people’s eyes.

                 In addition, my mother felt lonely because she was away from her hometown. People who my mother loved lived in Seoul, the capital. Going and meeting her friend and family was not easy because of her busy business and inconvenient transportation at that time. Moreover, my mother had to take care of my father’s mother and brother for a long time after she moved to the countryside. They were unfriendly to my mother and my siblings even though my mother was kind to them. Even though it was a stressful time for my mom because of her in-laws, there was no one who my mom could rely on. My mother still would talk about her hard times living with her in-laws. Nevertheless, we don’t live with my mother’s in-laws anymore. 

               On the other hand, there were positive things after moving to the suburb like hobbies that could be enjoyed outside the city. My mother said that the only good thing in her life was the natural environment, especially fresh air and relaxed atmosphere. There were two positives that could be felt only in the small population compared to the city. It was easy to have her free time with family. Likewise, my family was able to spend a lot of time together because our house and my parents’ work were in the same building. We could take more care of each other. 

                In retrospect, everything and every moment in the past was only days soaked with my mother’s tears. My sisters and I are always thankful to our mother, her effort and her sacrifice just for family. She led both sides of the family, not only the parents of my mother's side but also my father's side even though they have many daughters and sons. My mother is the strongest woman I have ever met. Now my sisters and I can see a mother's happy moments a lot.

Cause and effect - Alan Castaneda

Alan Eduardo Castaneda Garcia

ESL 100 CE

November 03, 2024

The Virus of Changes

Never underestimate a virus; it can change your life. My parents own a butcher shop, and a grocery store until today located in Jalisco, Mexico. At first, it was just the butcher shop. My grandmother, from my father's side, used to be the original owner, but she decided to give it to my father when he met my mother. My parents have been the owners for twenty-five years. I remember I was a little kid when they decided to combine the grocery store with the butcher shop. They continued making improvements to the store, and they even hired an extra employee to make deliveries. Everything was going perfectly until the pandemic happened. The effects of the pandemic not only affected my parents’ business, but the routes of our lives. 

At the start of the pandemic clients started coming less frequently, fewer than my parents expected. In my hometown, the stores didn’t close completely, but they made a few changes. Every business had to implement new sanitary standards, including wearing masks, sanitizing their hands to enter the place, and stepping through a sanitizing carpet before entering the store. Some people didn’t like the sanitary standards, so they preferred to go to stores that didn’t care about that. My parents used to have clients from other businesses as well, specifically from food businesses. Since those businesses were struggling as well, they started to buy less from my parents’ store, so my parents lost clients from both sides. 

Things couldn’t have gotten worse, but they did when my parents got COVID. Even though my parents always followed the sanitary standards, it was inevitable to catch COVID because they had to deal with clients in person. Some people didn’t believe that there was a virus; they were very skeptical. The people that used to think that way usually didn’t wear masks and didn’t care about any sanitary standards. That could have been the reason why my parents got COVID. Both of the stores had to been closed while my parents recovered. They stayed in a kind of farmhouse that was used for family gatherings located in a small town called La Laja. During that time, I stayed at my grandmother’s house. The good thing is that my aunt is a doctor, so she was in charge of prescribing medicine to my parents. 

Once my parents recovered from COVID, my father decided we were going to move to United States to find better opportunities. That was in a certain way a break from the butcher shop and the grocery store. We had also just gotten our United States residence at that time. My father decided to rent both of the stores to a friend of his, so it would be an income while we moved and settled down. In addition, my parents started to build a house in our hometown before the pandemic happened, so all of that was left on pause. Coming to the United States to find a better income to restore everything sounded great to my father. We moved to Grayslake Illinois, because some family members live there, and my uncle let us stay in his house while we found a place. A few months later, another of my uncles who owns an apartment building in Chicago told us that he had one free, and he could rent it to us. So, we moved to Chicago. 

Our lives have changed a lot in a short period of time. I think nobody expected COVID to be that big, or at least my parents and I didn’t. That virus changed our lives. Now that we have been living in Chicago for two years, the plans for my parents are to finish building the house and go back to living in our hometown. They don’t like it here that much. I think my plans might be the same when I grow older. I don’t see myself living all my life in Chicago, but everything can change. Only time will tell. 

Cause and Effect - Dawson

 

Sunday, November 3, 2024

Cause and Effect - Dawson

Weichen Zhang

ESL 100

October 7, 2024

Fresh off the Boat

The wheels of history roll forward all the time, and the river of time never stops flowing. A little dust from the times can weigh like a mountain on an individual’s shoulders. In my country, China, there was a nationwide economic inflation that influenced the price of food and energy around 2016 and 2017. This inflation was caused by the extreme weather and the rise in global oil prices. The pressure of living forced my parents to make a bold decision, which would change the whole family’s fate. My father came to the United States to earn more money and tried to get a green card. This was the beginning of a new road which is filled with hope and challenges. The ending of the road would not only change one person’s life but also change the future of the family.

One effect was that my family could gain the financial security and the foundation of life after we immigrated to the United States. In my hometown, Shenyang, which is the capital of the province, my parents needed to work very hard to get by because the price of food and energy increased rapidly. The prices of everything increased except my parents’ salary. Food and energy in the United States are cheaper than in China, and my family could survive with only my father’s salary, which was impossible to achieve in my hometown. As a result, my parents’ lives have become a lot less stressful. The effects don’t just include less stress. Financial security has given my family more chances and choices. For example, my mother can now learn the language and skills which can help her look for a job rather than working all day, and my father also has enough money to support my college education.

One of the most important effects of these changes has been my ability to receive a better education and secure a better future. I have a deep feeling about the difference between Chian and United States. I always felt a lot of pressure in Chinese schools, even in primary school. Ther were many students in each class, fifty or sixty, and I needed to compare myself to them based on my grades. Tests in Chinese’s students mind are not tests. They are like war because students’ grades would be shown in front of the whole class, and parents will be proud of children’s grades too. In contrast, there are not as many students in American schools as in China, and grades are private. I don’t have to compete with so many students in the class. Overall, I feel so thankful to my father that the shift let me experience a completely different world, and l can have more choices for my life not just focusing on my grades.

Regardless of the stress of family’s finances and educational environment, my family reunion has had a very influential effect on me too. My father left home when l was in primary school, and he was absent from my youth. I seldom talked to him on the phone because I thought the phone couldn’t take my father’s place in my heart. My father’s picture in my mind gradually became unclear, which was like a faded painting. When my mother and I met my father in Chicago’s airport, my feelings were complex, and I felt happy and sad at the same time. It felt like I had been in a ling dream, and now I woke up. My mother didn’t show any strong emotion about this reunion, and I think her happiness didn’t need to be shown by action or words. This reunion made me realize that family ties exist all the time. I couldn’t feel it in the past, but now I know that my family will stay together to face all the challenges and difficulties in life.

Although the mountains of the times are very heavy, people in history are not like leaves that can be blown away by the mind. Everyone is fighting with persistence, striving to break free from the shackless of fate. The power of courage comes from love, faith and determination in people’s hearts, just like my family. We bravely started a new road and kept going year after year, and their sacrifices were rewarded. The foundation of life, educational environment and reunion proved my family’s courage in the past and hope in the future. The spirit will continue guiding us to write an even more glorious chapter in our lives.

 

Cause and Effect - Yanfang Huang

 

A Journey

          People in Taishan City spend dollars instead of RMB. This saying is widely known in my hometown, Taishan, Southern China. This means that most families in Taishan have family members in a foreign country – mostly in the United States – and those foreign relatives often send money back. From the mid eighteenth century to the mid twentieth century, most people were in poverty because of wars and politics in China, and many people said the United States was full of gold. Many people went to the United States to work as laborers to improve their lives. My great-grandfather and grandfather were two of Taishan’s residents who went to the United States in the early twentieth century, and their choice affected my family for generations.

          One of the most affected people was my grandmother because my grandfather got sick and died very young in the United States. My grandmother had been a widow all her life. After my grandfather passed away, my grandmother did not remarry because this family could give her a better life. My great-grandfather often sent money back, so my family’s financial situation was stable in that period. She never worried about starving again. In addition, it was hard for a woman who had been married to find another good marriage. Many people thought it was bad luck to marry a widow unless the man was very poor or disabled. For these reasons, my grandmother preferred to live alone for the rest of her life. I cannot say my grandmother loved my grandfather because they only saw each other once after they got married. In my memory, my grandmother always talked to herself. In old China, marriage for women was like a transaction, a gamble, and it depended on their luck. Marrying a good man was the only way for women to get a better life.

          Besides my grandmother, another person affected was my father because he had a miserable childhood. My grandmother did not have a child, so she bought a boy who was my father to be her paper son. It was during World War II, and most people did not have enough food to eat or a place to live. My father’s parents had to sell all five of their children so that they could survive in those hard days. The villagers always bullied my father because he was not native to this village. This went on until my brothers and I were born and became adults. My father never told me about the abuse he had suffered, but I heard about it from others as I grew up. Maybe my father wanted to protect me and let me live with dignity. There was another reason my father lived a hard life. He had to take on the farm work because he was the only male in the family. When he was in primary school, he had to stop going to school to work in the fields when the farm was busy. As a result, he did not study well and discontinued his education after finishing primary school. I often saw my father looking preoccupied. Maybe he was thinking about his parents and siblings, or maybe he was thinking about his hard time in the past.

          Therefore, I will cherish my present life very much because of their past. Since I arrived in the United States, I have learned some history about Chinese people’s life experiences in the United States, and I realized how hard it was for my great-grandfather and grandfather. They did not speak English and lived in their small community in Chinatown. They worked the hardest jobs for minimum wage and were often humiliated by white people. Without a doubt, I am luckier than them. I can speak English, and I can apply to college and learn anything I want. Moreover, there are laws that protect foreigners from racism in the United States now. In addition, what happened to my grandmother and my father will not occur to me. Today, women do not need marriage to change their lives, and children are no longer commodities to be traded in China.

          My ancestors’ choice to leave their hometown had a profound impact on their family members. I cannot judge whether their choice was right or wrong because they had their difficulties. Life is like a journey, and everyone is a traveler. In the journey, there are challenges and benefits, losses and gains. Each traveler will make choices according to different situations. I choose to cherish what I have and enjoy life because I think the best scenery is on the path.