Life In Tenement Housing

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Life in Tenement Housing When I was traveling to America, I remember imagining what my life would be like in America. I imagined my family and I settling in an empty, clean, and white apartment. I imagined our family feeling comfortable in our quiet, clean, and spacious apartment. I knew that it would be difficult at first to adapt the American way of life; especially because we knew so little English. However, I never imagined that adapting to the “American way of life” meant living in an environment that restricted our basic necessities. When my family and I first arrived in our apartment, I was amazed. I remember wishing that there was a mistake somehow and we would soon reside in our perfect spacious apartment that I had imagined. Our apartment was on the 15th floor, which obviously meant we had to climb 15 flights of stairs after our long journey to the states. The higher we got the darker it seemed to get and by the time we reached our floor I couldn’t see anything, just shapes in the darkness. When we finally reached our floor, I was exhausted and tired that I just wanted to sleep for the rest of the day. However, our apartment seemed to be filled with at least twenty people because there were plenty of children crying along with several adults trying to calm them down. As it turns out, we were the fourth family to move in the 15th floor. A woman came to greet us and-although it seemed incredibly crowded as it was-showed us where we were to stay. As time passed by I learned that the air quality was very un-healthy, it has an extremely foul smell from all the waste people throw in the streets. The apartment was freezing in the winter and scorching hot in the summer. In the winter, it is impossible to keep warm but in the summer we resort to sleeping outside. I also found that it was impossible to get water in the winter because it was frozen and we had no

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