Day 177 - Here's to being Free!

I was outside with Jonas, carrying around my camera, hoping he would do something cute for me take a pic of, but as we went on a morning walk around the subdivision, Jonas loved looking at all the flags. He kept saying "that's a flag. that's another one. there's two flags, one two, there's another one," etc. It was so cute. So of course I had to take a pic of the flag in memory of 9/11.  Thank goodness there's reminders everywhere of that day.

Since everyone does this, I want to write it down. I've never written down how I found out about the planes crashing into the twin towers, just have said it. I was in 10th grade, I think. Yes, 15 years old. I was walking the upstairs hall at Box Elder high School, when my friend, Crystal May, came running up the stairs and said that a plane just crashed into the twin towers. Now me, being a naive High Schooler from a small city didn't really know just how important the twin towers were, so I didn't think much of it. Was I wrong! The whole day was spent watching TV, and learning the facts, watching the second plane crash in the towers, etc. I quickly learned what a big deal this meant for our nation.

Now, 12 years later, it's not just our nation that has been affected by this tragedy, but other countries have been affected by it. There's good people in America that can't become legalized Americans because of what happened at 9/11. They have to pay tons of money and even then that requires a ton of waiting. I worked with a guy my last year of teaching from South Africa that took 10 years and tons and tons of money to become a citizen. I think he and his family were still working on it when I left. Crazy!

Security has gotten tighter, which is a good thing. I'm sure there's other things, I just can't think of them right now, but it's interesting to see & watch what has happened to us as a nation from an incident 12 years ago. I love living here in America, and I'm truly grateful to be free. Even though our country has issues, it can't be as bad as other places. Here's to being an American!