Jack D.'s Memoir

From East to West 

        Clump. Clump, clump. The sounds of our bags were driving me crazy as they bumped over the tiny divits of the tiled airport floor. My dad is the most punctual person in the world. When we finally arrived at our gate, a feeling of relief fell on me.

        The plane ride from shanghai to Oregon took a total of 16 hours. The plane ride experience was like any other except is was a lot longer. Because we were moving, we only took what we could carry in our suitcases. The rest of our belongings would not arrive for another month. I couldn’t imagine how we could live without the rest of our belongings. For the next month, we stayed in an apartment because we couldn’t buy our house yet. From the apartment, we could walk to many places. We could walk to the grocery store, Target, and the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop. Outside of our apartment building, we loved collecting as many pine cones as we could. In the four years of living in China, I never saw pinecones in real life. I really missed the scents of the Chinese market. The sweet smelling Pine trees along with the crunching of my feet over the pine needle slivers replaced those market smells of the past.

        A hobby I started in Shanghai was hoola hooping. If I wanted to play with the other kids in China, at school, I needed to learn how to hoola hoop. Whenever the chance arose, I hoola hooped. The time in the apartment went fairly fast because there were many new things to try. The morning finally arrived when we could move in to the house. We packed our small amount of belongings and left the apartment. As we drove to our new house, my mind raced with thoughts of what our new life in the states would be like.

        On the way to our house, I noticed an enormous amount of evergreens on the sides of the road. After I saw tons of people in China, it felt peaceful as I watched the gentle sway of the pine trees in Oregon. Once we arrived at our house we saw kids play in the circle at the end of our street. When we stepped in our new home, a feeling of happiness washed over me because we finally had a house.

         After we unpacked, I went outside to meet the kids in our new neighborhood. Even though the kids weren’t in our grade, they were still fun to play with. We found out that the school was in walking distance from our house. On the first day of school, a mix of nervousness and excitement whirled around me. When we rode our bikes to school, there appeared a gigantic hill. Every time I went down it an adrenaline rush washed over me. The first day of school I saw tons of other kids franticly trying to arrive at their classes and cross the mob of kids. When I finally entered my classroom I saw new faces and talked to a few. At recess kids played many new games from what I played in China. Some of the games include four square, Wall ball, and Pickle.

        Some kids move from one neighborhood to another. Others move from one state to another. Well I had to move from one continent to another. I clearly over came  a long distance move.