Moving to America

Brooke Paterson

After returning from school, I noticed that something was different from the way my mum was acting. I was young and didn't know what was wrong. My sister was sitting in the lounge at this point, and I remember my dad coming home from work and looking very stressed. My mum came through and told me and my sister that dinner was ready. When we went through my dad was already sitting at the table. This is the moment that I remember crystal clear: we had pizza for dinner and once we had finished our dinner my dad said to my sister and I "Your mum and I have thought very hard about this..." He stopped for a while and neither my sister nor I knew what was to come next. My dad finally said "we're moving to America"

I was only five at the time and wasn't too sure what was going on. My sister was definitely sure though. "No, we can't move!" she said in floods of tears. My mum quickly grabbed my sister and took her in her arms, "It's okay, I know", she kept on repeating. I suddenly blurted out "What's okay mummy?" "What's going on?" My mum, dad and sister all looked at each other as if to say what should we tell her? My dad said "Brooke, what would you say if I told you we're going on holiday for a long time?" A Holiday! wow, great! I thought to myself. Eventually I said "For how long daddy?" My mum said "Well we'd be there for two years and we'd have a new house and you would have a new school" I remember trying to stop myself from crying. I realised that it wasn't a holiday but instead a big change that would in fact shape the next six years of my life.

Things started to progress from here. Our house then went up for sale; I announced my departure to the class and all our family were told too. The time started to come closer, and we started to pack away some of our things. The idea of moving away became harder to accept after my grandpa got ill. We hoped that he would get better before we moved and fortunately he did get better, he wasn't one hundred percent though. But soon we were to move and it finally hit me like a bolt of lightening.

Soon it was our last day at school and I had to say goodbye to the people that had been good friends and classmates to me for the past year. I was sad at the thought of having to leave all my family and friends. We had a party the night before we left, which the whole family attended and saw us before we departed for Texas. The next morning, we got up at 3am in order to catch our flight. I was so exhausted and didn't want to leave. Soon our day of 27 hours of travelling was over and we arrived in Dallas, Texas, our home for the next six years. We stepped out to the hot and humid weather at 11 pm US time. We got all of our cases and our rental car was waiting for us. We had no idea where we were going and got lost a lot. After two hours of driving around looking for our hotel, we finally came upon it. I knew that from what I saw, I loved Texas and no longer had a problem with living there. Although I still missed my family a lot I knew that they would visit me and I would visit them. And at last I no longer feared change but accepted it instead.

Looking back at this whole experience now I feel, that going to a new country was probably one of the best things that happened to me. I met knew people that are still some of my best friends today. This experience has changed me as a person; I know have a different outlook on life and try to take every opportunity that I get as you never know when you will get it again. I'm also not so scared of change anymore. If I learned something very important from all this then it would be that a lot of good can come from change, too.