The life threatening journey from southern Guatemala to Los Angeles proved to be the hardest challenge my parents faced at ages 19 and 25. With one bag and a dream, my parents aimed to create a new home from scratch. The Land of Opportunity granted my parents a lifestyle that has given me the capability to express and share not only their story, but mine as well. Memories are held in places that have already been visited, but foreign areas are blank slates. There were new faces, new secrets, and new possibilities and with this new beginning comes a sense of liberation. From their sacrifice, the ability to build a new home from the ground arose and emerged as their reward. Four years into the new found glory a challenge was met. This challenge…show more content… Just by waking up every morning, these girls at the tender age of ten and eleven proved themselves as the strongest people I've had the pleasure to meet. More than half of the girls I watched over had no father figure present in their life, whether it be jail, abandonment, or death. As the other camp counselors reprimanded them and sent them to the time out chair for fighting and back-talking, I sat down with them and tried to learn more about their life at home. I guess you could say that I may have taken the term 'counselor' a little too literally. These conversations proved to me that their lack of a father figure was integral in shaping their angry and rebellious behaviors. Once a week, the girls attended a program called "life skills" which was run by a Puerto Rican woman that looked like she could rip your heart out of your chest with her bare hands. These days were always the most vulnerable because the girls broke down their self-built walls and talked so comfortably about topics that no girl their age should even know about. There was trust and within the word trust stands the word…show more content… If you take away the last two letters of the word scared you get scar. The scars that these girls bore on their skin and in their hearts have selfishly made them into who they are today. I became the ‘vitamin E oil’ that helped heal their scars. I was just as exceptional as my parents. I taught them that ethnicity and circumstances should not and will not dictate their success in the future and that it is okay to juggle two culture. Now as I am the first one in my family to graduate high school in America, I realize that I am not only doing this for myself and my family, but for those 27 girls. It has become responsibility to show them that the conditions they are living in are only temporary and there will come a time in which they will strive and become the strongest women they can be. Creating a personal mission to provide the best days possible for these girls was among the easiest goals I’ve set for myself. The days flew by as we laughed, danced, and sang off-tune to Ariana Grande on the radio. Secret handshakes and friendship bracelets were all the rage. I created a new home with a better lifestyle for them just like my parents did for me. The last day of camp was one of the most emotional days of my