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🇵🇪 🇪🇸What I have learned growing up in Peru and Spain

When I was 8 years old I came to Madrid with my parents, I left Peru and after a 20-hour travel I arrived to Madrid where my father was already living for several years, my grandparents, uncles, cousins and friends still were living in Peru (and still are). Everything I knew up to that moment changed, I found myself in a big new city, a new neighborhood, where people spoke with a different accent, and in a new school with different classmates, probably an incredibly big change for a 8 years old child. Now, 15 years later I can see the great things of having moved to another country. Peru and Spain have many things in common, such as the language, religion and probably more things that I can’t think of right now, but also have some differences, food, the humor, transport, streets, the way people live (at least how people around me lived in Peru vs how people around me live in Madrid), I think having grew in two countries has allowed me to appreciate that is beautiful to discover a new culture and has made me have an open mind towards other cultures. Another thing that I have learned is to value my personality and myself, when I arrived to Madrid I felt different than the other childs, i.e my classmates, maybe it could have been because I come from another country, maybe the socioeconomic status or maybe I was just overwhelmed by changes, but this feeling remained for many years. this is added to the fact that I used to be extremely shy when I was a child. Fortunately, nowadays I value myself, love where I come from and love the weird things I do. I think the experiences in your life shape the way you are, I feel that moving to another country is difficult, in this paragraph I would like to emphasize the economic aspect of it, my mother and me arrived to Spain in the mid of the financial crisis of 2008, I am grateful that we had enough money for food and housing, but we lived with a tight economy, these years taught me to do not take for granted the things that I have to day. For instance for many years we didn’t go to restaurants, have vacations or internet at home, nowadays I have those things and I can value them more. Also,until I was 18 years old, my parents rented the rooms that we had free, so for 10 years I lived with many people from many countries, sometimes I didn’t like it but today I see it as a interesting experience, and has make me value intimacy. Finally, I would like to say that I am very glad of having spent the last 15 years of my life in Spain, I have had an exposure to many things, I have had the opportunity to live for several months in Ireland and the United States, maybe, I couldn’t have had that opportunity if I had stayed in Peru for all my life. Unfortunely, not everything are good stuff, for instance, being far from your family make you get away from them and when you go to visit them back is not the same. Another bad thing is distance and bad events, if a loved one has a problem is difficult and expensive to take a 12 hours flight (Madrid-Lima distance in hours).