Not American but still hurt me

Date Submitted: 09/12/2016
Author Info: Paula (León, Guanajuato, Mexico - USA) 
Occupation: Student
Lived in NY on 9.11.01?: No
Knew someone who perished?: No

On 9/11 I was on vacations visiting New York city since my school in Mexico didn’t start until late September so we decided to go and spent a couple of weeks in the beautiful city of New York. I was 6 years old at the time but this is something I would never ever forget. We were staying at some hotel (I don’t really remember the name of it) but it was close to the WTC, probably 5 block away or so; but I do remember that our room had the perfect view to the twin towers and I was in love with those buildings (it was my 1st time on NY) and every night I spent there I loved to watch those towers. on September 9th in the late afternoon we went to eat dinner at the restaurant at the top of one of the buildings, and the view was just so amazing. On the morning of 9/11 my mom, my brother and I were at the hotel and my dad went for a run very early, he came back when it was probably 8:30 am and he was trying not to make noise so it wouldn’t wake us up, and the suddenly it happened. We heard a super loud noise, it woke us all up and my dad opened the curtains to see what was going on and we saw it, the first building was on fire, papers were flying all over and I just couldn’t believe, I was so shocked that tears wouldn’t even come down my face… we stared at it for some minutes when suddenly the other plane hit. That’s when we started freaking out. My mom said “we gotta get out of here” so we went to the street with a few backpacks with some of our stuff, no taxis in the area, just people walking with no direction….we walked a few blocks and as we were walking, suddely we heard another loud noise and we turned back and the south tower was collapsing, we stared running cause everyone elsa was running, we didn’t know what was going on, we thought there was another bomb or something. When the north tower collapsed we were inside a restaurtant watching the news, just so incredible. Everyone was in desbelief. It traumatized me so much that I still have bad dreams about it and I constantly pray for the innocent lives that were taken that day. Our flight back to Mexico was schechuled on September 13th but after all that happened we had to wait a little more. I will definitely never forget, even tho I’m not American, I am human and those innocent people were humans too.

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