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First Days

Global Nation is partnering with the South Asian American Digital Archive to tell the stories of your first days in the United States. If you like these stories, find more like them at firstdaysproject.org.

Gilli Danenberg in second grade (L) when she first arrived in the US from Israel at the age of seven, and Gilli now, age 14.

‘A lot of lies came out of my mouth that year’

Education

Moving schools is tough enough but imagine flying in from another country and plonking down in a new classroom in a new culture. Gilli Danenberg moved from Israel to the US at the age of 7. She remembers second grade as one long string of embarrassing incidents.

Born in Afghanistan, Sonita Alizadeh got a full scholarship to go to Wasatch Academy, a boarding school in the heart of Utah.

Afghan teen rapper goes from poverty in Afghanistan to eating sushi in the US

Culture
bomba

Hip-hop until dawn marked this Colombian singer’s days in the US

Music
burundi

Fresh from Burundi to America — this man is watching war break out from afar

Conflict
poet

How Dalí and RC Cola helped a poet laureate find his way in the US

Culture
Eighth grader Tanzid Sakib goes to public school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He arrived from Bangladesh at the age of 10.

Tanzid Sakib’s first experience with an American school literally left him on the floor

Education

Imagine having the chair pulled out from under you the second you walk into a US classroom. Tanzid Sakib can laugh about it now. The teenager from Bangladesh recalls his first days of public school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The author, with her extended family, in India.

Her first days in America were lonely, but this immigrant from India built a life here

Culture

Life in India was crowded and full of people. In America, Naazish YarKhan learned to build relationships all over agin.

arrival

Memories of fleeing Vietnam, landing in Idaho and asking people for candy

Conflict

After anxious days in Guam, Joshua Nguyen remembers restarting life with his family in Idaho and trick-or-treating until midnight.

The Truong family arrived to the United States not long after fleeing Vietnam in 1975, when the then-capital of South Vietnam, Saigon, fell to the North Vietnamese army. Thu-Thuy Truong, far right, places bunny ears above her brother, Sy.

New to America, this young Vietnamese refugee wanted to ‘erase’ his past

Conflict

A brother and sister remember their abrupt start to a new life in America after they fled collapsing South Vietnam. It’s one story among the many collected by StoryCorps from Vietnamese refugees whose lives were changed by the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Kenneth Rowe is in his early 80s, lives in Daytona Beach, Florida, and still does 60 push-ups every day.

Escaping from North Korea was just the beginning for this American immigrant

Culture

Kenneth Rowe was lucky to get out of North Korea alive, let alone on to the United States as a celebrated defector. But staying in America and starting a new life was far from easy.