Madhumitha Sriram studying in class 5 at Chettinad Harishree Vidyalayam shares her experience on coming to Chennai from the United States for the first time .
My family and I lived in the United States since I was a child and last year we had to come to India due to a visa issue.
When I came here, I was really scared to walk on the roads which were over crowded. The vehicles were not stopping for kids like in the U.S. I didn’t feel good about the trash being thrown on the streets. It made me so nervous to see the bugs and mosquitoes all over.
I started nagging my parents to take me back to the United States. But my parents told me that there are also good things about India and they told me to wait for a year to go back to the United States.
Things started to change for me when I joined Harishree Vidyalayam. This is the first time I am ever studying in a school in India and I felt so great on the first day itself. My classmates were very kind and friendly. All the teachers were very kind too. They were able to understand me and didn’t scold me when I didn’t do well in Tamil or Hindi at the beginning. Even though I was able to understand the languages, I struggled to read and write. With the help of my mom, I started doing well in those subjects very soon.
I even passed the Prathamic exam conducted by the Hindi Prachar Sabha in August 2009. I am very happy that I learn classical Bharatanatyam, Carnatic music and violin and I get to spend time with my cousins and relatives. I also get to play with my friends very often here than in the U.S, because it’s always sunny here.
Even though I miss a lot of things from the United States, India and Chennai are not bad at all as I thought earlier. But I still want to go back to the United States and visit Chennai often.