Thanks for the great feedback and the alerts and faves. It really does mean a lot and encourages me more than you can know. My computer recently deleted everything off the entire thing and for some inexplicable reason, I've had a hard time writing after seeing all of my other typed stories and chapters disappear so... Yeah.

Anyway, you guys are great and thanks so much for all of it.

Differences

I couldn't believe it. They just kept coming in waves. They came from little corners of everywhere. So many different people, different languages, different religions, different beliefs, different everything. So many, many differences. America was becoming a land of differences.

Some might ask how so many differences could ever exist in one place. Well, it wasn't easy. I promise you that. There were a lot of problems and prejudices for a long time. I mean, a lot of that stuff, but for the most part after a while it was okay.

All the cultures seemed to add something to my country. People were learning things that they wouldn't have learned any other way. They were branching out and making friends with people they probably wouldn't have otherwise. It was as if America had become a great big melting pot of people and cultures. It didn't matter where one came from, only that they had come to my country.

So many who came from other countries were having to fight just to live when all that wanted was a chance. Some of them even struggled for years, just trying to earn money to come here. Quite a few of these people came here alone and picked up a job—sometimes multiple jobs—to send money to their families so that eventually they could come, too.

There's something special in being a free nation, a nation of opportunity. It's a sort of warmth in your heart and a sense of pride knowing that you are a country to which people dream of coming. They call America "The Golden Land of Opportunity", and they tell their children stories about it, stories so full of hope that it makes one's heart hurt to hear them. This is how they see America.

It's like what that hot green chick has inscribed inside the base of her statue:

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

So many of them dreamed of coming here, and when they finally did, they realized they were different from everyone else. This meant that they had a lot of barriers and obstacles to overcome. Eventually, though, those differences were no longer a difficulty. The community grew together because of those differences, and then followed cities and counties and then states, until finally the nation grew closer together.

Many might think that having so many different people is a weakness, but really… It's our differences, so many differences, that bring us together and make us strong.

So this is one of the "best". It's also the first one that isn't a specific event but rather a time period.

Hope you all like it. It's a little different.

~Kanae~