Blog # 8

                                       The Oath

On the 26th of Wednesday, I had the Oath ceremony for citizenship. I had to arrive 30 min earlier before the appointment time. The ceremony was to be held at the Convention Center. More specifically it is located in the center of Downtown, Los Angeles.

There was a traffic caused by an accident on our way to the Convention Center; four cars had been hit by one behind the other in one row. I was nervous all the way, and it was good that I wasn’t the driver. My husband was driving the car as I annoyed him by my remarks “go this way, those cars in that line are moving faster than the cars in your line, or go that way …” and he was patiently changing one line then another. I don’t like to be late, especially in big occasions. Traffic was killing me; we were even provided that something unexpected might be on the way. Finally we reach our destination, and I was happy that we weren’t late.

 Honestly it was my first time in the Convention Center. It is also good that there were arrows and sings to show the people where to go all over the place. If I was by my self, I would be definitely lost. When we first entered the hall or auditorium, there was a great amount of people that wandered around me. The auditorium in our thoughts can be described into three sections. The first section belonged to the guests’ seats, the another room belonged to the future citizens where there were much more sits in the rows and the columns, and finally the final section belonged to the stage’s huge flag hanging from the ceiling, where there was a big table standing in the middle, with two big TVs on the both corners of the flag. There were big lines for registration. Future citizens must be registered before the ceremony; therefore, more than 20 tables have been provided. After registration we were conducted to our seats, and on the way to the sits everybody received a small flag and envelope with material about how we can vote in the nearest future. All of us were waiting for the judge to come and start the ceremony. We stand when judge arrived (he was late and we were waiting for another 20-30 min) and started to read the Oath of Allegiance .Everybody was repeating after him. The judge announced that there were 2,400 people on that day who became U.S citizens. Then the TVs turned on and the president of the United States, Barack Obama, congratulated all the new citizens in his speech. Then we listened to an Anthem; consequently, we put our right hand on our heart. Everybody became so excited, (a couple of people in the front of me were crying).

 When the ceremony ended everybody (new fresh citizensJ) was forming lines to get their certificates. My husband was waiting for me with a bouquet of flowers. He congratulated me and took a couple of pictures. Then we happily went home. The end….