A topic of my choice

http://www.vietabroader.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=7166

So this is my personal statement. "a topic of my choice".

Background information: my cousins were American citizens. I stayed with them when
I came here (last year). They like to gamble a lot. So every Wednesday,they took me to this one casino Mystic Lake. We all ate dinner and after that I had to look after their 2 year-old daughter while they gambled (state law says that you must be older than 18 to go into the gambling area. And about 2 am is when my cousins went back and brought the two of us, me and their daughter, home.



"I finally settled in one of those cozy seats in the lounge near the reception
area at 11 p.m. I set my two-year-old cousin down, pulled out my
homework, and started reading: “Hester Prynne remained constant in her
resolve to make known to Mr. Dimmesdale…” All of a sudden a loud voice
across the room disrupted my focus. This was Mystic Lake Casino, what
could I expect?

I am an international student from Vietnam andbefore
I came to the States, doing my homework and watching my little
cousin Lilian in one of the biggest casinos in the Midwest was not
something I had in mind. But I did it anyway, out of my obligation to
the elders – my second cousins who happened to be gambling somewhere in
this enormous and complicated place. The red couch next to the
fireplace had long been our spot every Wednesday (seafood buffet is
always Wednesday at Mystic Lake). After we ate and my cousins
disappeared into the gambling masses, I walked Lilian to the fountain
with the statue of the woman who was said to be the mother of the Sioux
nation and read to her the interesting story carved on the stone about
her. Then, we both set off to our familiar places. I let Lilian play
nearby while I busied myself with The Scarlet Letter, Physics lab
reports, or French vocabulary that I brought along that night.

By 1 a.m. Lilian has already curled up next to me, sleeping carelessly. I
set my book aside for awhile and stared at the fireplace. I had dreamt
of something better than this. I had dreamt about learning all the
interesting things about life in a quiet library, meeting students
whose purposes were similar to mine. I did not dream about the slot
machines, or the poker tables, or the random noises in the smoke-filled
room.

As I looked around the casino, I saw people of all ages
sitting motionless in front of machines with their eyes fixed on the
little screens. Some were there before I came and left after I did.
What was it, I wondered, in those screens that kept people so occupied,
making them spend the money that they had worked hard to earn? Perhaps,
in one way or another, they were here for the same reason that I was in
the U.S.: in search for the life-changing opportunity. While they spent
money in hopes of winning some back, my goal in being here is to study
and to do well at it. From this little couch near the fireplace I got
to calculate the mass of the moon without putting it on the scale, to
describe my walk to the nearby grocery store in French, to meet
Frederick Douglass the slave who defied everything, fighting for his
freedom. And if being in Mystic Lake was the price I had to pay, I
would be willing to accept it.

The old fashioned clock above the fireplace pointed about 2:15 a.m.
when my cousins came to take us home. I packed up all my finished homework and followed them to the parking lot in the bitter cold of a January morning.
The sleepless casinoguests once again got to see the funny scene of a teenager holding her Physics textbook, carrying her heavy backpack, tiredly walking across
the hallway right after a couple in their mid-thirties: the man was
carrying a two-year-old baby, trying to comfort her back to sleep and
the woman was too busy talking on the phone in some strange language to
care about anything. The car was cold and the leather seat was hard,
but both of us, Lilian and I, were too tired to care; and thus we both
fell asleep. All that I could remember was that the day ended with me
dragging my feet up to my room. The following morning I walked in the
entrance of my school, invigorated and excited to learn more.

This is my casino and I am betting on the knowledge this place has to offer."