Topic Essay # 93

While I was growing up in Colombia my idea of fun was going outside to the park either with my cousins or friends to play until it got dark and my mom would call me to go back inside the house. Growing up in Colombia is something very different than a kid growing up here in the United States.
My afternoons during the week would always have around the same schedule as I would be back home by one in the afternoon, at two thirty I would had already eaten lunch, and by six all my homework would be done meaning that I would be free to go out and play. If I did not have my homework done my mom would not allow me to go out for the day.
The complex in which I lived had a few houses owned by my uncles or aunts, so growing up around family was something I always did. I have a few cousins around the same age range so all I had to do was walk down the street knock on their door and ask them to come out and play.
For us having fun had a very broad meaning because it could be something like playing hide and seek, making up games as we went, getting dirty in the park, riding our bikes around the complex or to the other end it was sitting down and talking about our life, with the girls we would do each other’s hair while the boys just kicked the ball around, just going into someone’s house and watch a movie, or just lay there in the grass with the summer breeze warming up our skin as we looked to the sky and made shapes out of the clouds.
My idea of fun was something I could do every day, at any time and never gets tired of it. Having fun it was a moment in which I could forget about everything and just enjoy my time with those whom were around. Fun did not always meant doing big things or be in expensive places as at the moment my family did not have the resources to do that but within that I learn that it was the little things that would make up a really nice big picture that actually mattered.
With the fact that a few places in my complex were owned by members of my family, something I would always look forward to when I was a kid was the fact that wherever I went there would always be food. Every single kid always likes to eat, it doesn’t matter where you get your food as long as you get it you will be happy. Well I loved being able to eat around those whom I love the most and not always having to eat at my house. All my uncles and aunts know how to cook. With my cousins we would try to switch houses as much as possible so we could have different types of meals made by those whom we love.
The memory of being able to go outside and play all day until it was dark out and then know that when I was done I could go and eat something delicious is something from my childhood that I would never change. I could have fun for a few hours and then look forward to be in the table eating and chatting around those who mean the world to me.
I know that if I had grown up here in the United States, this memory from when I was a kid would not be the same as when I moved here everything changed, and being here already for over eight years I can see the difference in how things really go. I am happy that I had my own idea of having fun, and looking forward to something in Colombia and that is truly a blessing for me.