Reflective Blog

     Being born in Africa, I've always been different than any other teenager I know. Instead of playing with Barbies, tiaras, or even dress up, I would always be climbing up trees. I lived in a big three bedroom apartment with huge mango tree's surrounding. Every morning I would go pick out a mango to eat on the way to school. At that time, I was eight years old and in third grade. I had no pressure to deal with and everything was so easy-going.
    In April, my parents decided to move us to the U.S. Their reason being that America has a better education level. I was devastated and tried convincing them not to move because I had grown used to everything in Kenya but they refused. Since I had five months until school started, we visited our cousins in London for a month. I was extremely exited to go see some of the sights London is famous for. Me and my cousins visited the Queen's palace, Big Ben, London Bridge, and a few other beautiful places.
     Moving to Princeton in New Jersey was difficult. Everything was different in both a good and a bad way. There weren't kids playing and having fun outside. Everyone seemed to be inside working or watching T.V. The roads outside were crammed with moving cars. Soon it was September and that meant school. I didn't know what to expect. My first day at Village school wasn't as bad as I had imagined. As the days followed, I got used to everything.
     The summer that I was going into fifth grade, we moved again. This time I would be going to Parsons. I had to make new friends and start all over. This time I didn't mind so much. I had grown used to starting over a couple of times. Fifth grade was absolutely amazing but surprisingly, I moved yet to another school but thankfully I still stayed in the same town. Unfortunately the first two years of Linwood went by so quickly. Eight grade was when all the pressure started getting to me. Every time I got a good grade or did something good, my parents expected me to do better. Going into high school, I needed to do better myself. All of my classes got dramatically harder. When I was younger, all I wanted was to grow up and now I'd rather go back to the days that the only thing I worried about was which color to pick from my crayon box. Even though I want to be a kid again, I'd rather move forward along with everyone I love.