Dan Basheer, a senior at Cathedral Prep and second-year member of the staff of The Rambler, is an immigrant from Jordan, a country in the Middle East. Dan arrived in the United States when he was in 6th grade. His journey to the United  States and the changes that came along with it are an important part of his personal story.
His first impression of the United States was full of hope. It was always a dream for Dan to move to the U.S., in order to have some change in his life. He wanted the United States to be a place where people could come for a new start, and according to him, that’s what he found after the move.
However, he has also faced many challenges in his time here. The biggest one was the language barrier. His first language was Arabic, which is drastically different than English. Luckily, he had some schooling in English before he moved, but for the first few years that he was in the States, he had difficulty communicating to other people, which meant that he often stayed quiet and listened in on other people’s conversations. Dan was quite thankful that he was young at the time, and by the time he was in 7th grade, he knew the English language well enough to be more comfortable with communicating with other people.
His number one reason for wanting to move to the United States in specific was for the education that people have here. It is true that he wanted to have a new start, although he seemed to like the opportunities available here in this part of the world.
There were a few things that he did not expect to find after his transition over here. “I did not expect how organized the cities were. That wasn’t something that I got to see very often back in Jordan. How compact, yet busy everything was at the same time, along with how clean things were,” Dan said. This, along with the cultural differences between the two countries, created a very different area to live in. “I don’t think that I could find things like this (the United States) anywhere close to where I used to live.”
All in all, Dan is quite happy with the decision to move to the United States. He hasn’t encountered very much discrimination in the area, at least anything notable. “I miss the old life that I used to have, and I think I will for a while still. Although in the end, moving to the United States was a good experience, and I’m glad I did it.”