Creative essay

Many-many years ago in a poor farmer's family was born indescribable beauty baby, male baby. Everybody was judging him for his beauty, and nobody loved him, except his mother. She was a young lady with strong beliefs in God, purity of thought and success. She named the child Alphonsus, which meant noble and ready in Latin. She believed this name would give him power and success in the future.

In addition to Alphonsus, she also had two sons; one was 14 years older and another 16 years older. Alphonsus was growing up in this family of three children. He was the youngest one; both brothers were harmful to him and were trying to make him upset. Always, when Alphonsus was trying to do some work, brothers would just punch him and say that they can do this job better, and it did not matter what they did. However, there was one field in which they were not able to do anything, architecture. They did not know how to do statues from clay and how to work with clay. While Alphonsus just loved to create something new from clay.

At the beginning of his passion, brothers were trying to make pastime with clay unpleasant to him, but they were not able to make something better than he was. Therefore, they got bored with it and just gave up on this idea. Alphonsus was spending all his time with the clay and trying to make unbelievably beautiful sculpture.

After many years of practicing his room was full of sculptures, that there was no space for him to sleep. His mother decided to sell some of them. She went to the marketplace to sell it for nothing. However, the first buyer gave so much for a small sculpture that she was able to live on it for a year. She came back from a marketplace, brought all family to the table and put that small sculpture in the middle. She told the price that was offered, and the room kept silent.

Brothers were looking at her, then at the sculpture and again at her. They were shocked. At that moment, Alphonsus was sitting on a chair and calmly was watching the sculpture.

Many of us have a place, where they like to go. Place, which makes us feel good and removed from the reality, a kind new world in which we can jump for several minutes or hours.  I found one, like this at Calhoun College.

It is Calhoun library, very quiet, authentic and meaningful place. Every time when I come in, I feel knowledge that was gathering for centuries and get an understanding that many smart people were studying here. If you come in, go to the room with tables, take a seat at huge circle table and leave windows that look at Elm street behind, you would be able to contemplate all beautifulness of old wood furniture in dark brown colors. Brown is a solid and elegant color, it is soothing, not annoying, and giving the feeling of comfort and security. This color inspires me, once I seat at this table, I want to work and achieve.

It was a rainy, dark early morning; I was on my way to the airport, looking outside the window and realizing that I was leaving Moscow for a very long period. Now I understand that at the time I did not realize what it meant to live alone in another country without family, friends, anybody and anything that you used to have. I was not able to imagine what I was going to face there, on another continent.

Let us come back to the flight, that early morning I took my first very long flight, a flight into the unknown. Of course, at that moment I already knew some tips about American culture and how things would be. However, when I finally deboarded the plane I saw a completely different world than the one I used to live. I was shocked by huge space everywhere. In Europe, everything is smaller and this new world with enormous cars, corridors and alleys was something strange. I went through the corridor and studied the customs lines. There were very long lines and it hit me “It does not matter whether it's USA, UK, Germany, Russia, every country has these crazy lines.” . However, after several seconds I saw a machine in which I just inserted my passport and it allowed me to go. The customs officer did not even look at my passport he just stamped it and told me, “Have a good one”. It was unbelievably quick; I had never imagined that it could be that fast. I took my luggage and left the building. Something that caught my attention was a Range Rover. I thought to myself "Why is it so small?" when in fact it is not small - it is America that is so big.

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On the way to my new home, I started getting used to huge sizes -roads, buildings and everything else. The taxi driver from Jamaica was describing America and asking about Russia. I understood almost nothing, especially his accent. Nevertheless, it was the first person with whom I had a long conversation. At that moment, I thought too long.

Finally, I arrived at the small town of Thornwood, NY. To me, it looked like a village, a rural area. There was a forest, some houses and a road from nowhere to nowhere. I had never experienced anything similar, but I was much more struck when to my simple question, “How to get to a grocery store and how long will it take?” I received complicated instruction and an estimated time of 25 minutes on foot. Back in Russia, it would take me the same amount of time to reach the center of Moscow. Thinking about it the same idea returned to my mind -  America is so big.