Luis Alberto Lopez Medina

Story

Our country was experiencing a very hard time socially and politically, not many opportunities to young families to progress and specially to have security with limited health and education issues.

Having a sister in Australia for the past four years telling us to immigrate was the motivation to us to leave our country and the rest of our family and friends, and take the opportunity given for the government to live and became one of the grateful families to accept this beautifull country as ours.

The journey was very nice and very fast, the reason was that on that particular time THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT sended a Qantas charter plane to Uruguay to pick up the people and we pay only U$S 100.00 for the Family trip to Australia. We still have the tickets they isssue to us.

25 years later, I returned with my wife and our first grandson to Uruguay and flying by Qantas we had the opportunity in those days to visit the Cabin and speak with the Pilot that remember his first flight to South America was to Uruguay on 1974; he was the Pilot on our immigration DAY, we were very proud and happy for that incredible reunion.

Our arrival was magnificent and the whole travelers erupted in a big and extraordinary applause to the crew that they try very hard to made our trip the best possible. We had left everything behind. Especially for our children, we have three ( 12-11-6) – it was a very big change in life.

We realized at the customs office that the little of English that we learned before in our country was completely useless, we were in a new place without being able to communicate, that was our first time in front of reality, but our goal must be achieved and we managed to get through that moment.

Our relatives were at the terminal and drove us to their home. It was incredible to see the amount of lights and the size of the car yards and the amount of cars for sale, 40 minutes of driving and we arrived to our first home in Sydney Australia.

I will never forget the first morning in this country, the Sun, the Sky the Trees, the song of the Birds everything was UNIQUE and different but beautifull, I really felt at home with a strange background and a great colourful scene in front that I never forget and started to love and appreciate.

Our opportunities of work in those days were very good and in my fourth day I start to work in a factory assembling parts of cars, even though I am a Saddle Maker I learned my duties and did the job.

Harder in the beginning was for our children attending schools without the language skills, but they shared the responsibility to decide about our trip and they put up with the challenge.

After 35 years (in OUR country of Australia) I feel very Happy with our desision to migrate and now after arriving with A$D 38.00 my wife and three children we manage to have :

Three children and their partners and the most important in our life: Four Grandchildren that has given us the most important strength in our Old Days.

Mauricio (25) years old, Sabrina (10) our Princess, Alexander (9) the Sport man and Jakob (7) our youngest are OUR FORTUNE that we don’t change for anything in the world.

MAY The LORD BLESS this COUNTRY for the many Opportunities we have.

THANK YOU AUSTRALIA and HIS PEOPLE for YOUR LOVE and CARE.

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