The reality of the tremendous leap I took sank in a few days after Christmas while I was sitting in my empty room, on the bare wood floor, in a strange house, starring at the phone.  All my life I wanted a phone in my room and now that I finally had it I didn’t have anyone to call (at least cheaply.) Of course my first call was to Jessica.  We hadn’t talked in over a week and so much had changed.  I told her of the horrendous 3 days spent in a car with my family, a gazillion boxes, and a dog.  She sympathized with the strange people I ran into that looked just like kids from Houston and the fact that all our furniture and clothes was somewhere in Illinois.  We stayed in a motel until our stuff arrived and as my brother pointed out we were actually homeless until we closed the deal on the house.

 Life settled down a bit after that.  We got the keys to our house and our furniture arrived.  After a hectic day of lugging boxes around I had my room unpacked.  It was beginning to feel like home again.  The first thing I did was to hang up all my pictures of my friends.  This helped me to remember that there were people who cared about me.  I still had a few weeks before I started my second semester of high school, and I spent most of that time talking with old friends and getting to know the area.  My mom and I would get into the car and just go exploring.  At first we tried it without a map, but the roads were so confusing that it was impossible.  We got lost so many times, but always managed to find our way back home.  I enrolled myself in gymnastics classes as a way to keep myself active in the dead of winter.  Gymnastics was something I had done off and one since I was 6 years old.  It gave me something to do and I met a lot of interesting people, which would lead to many adventures later on.
 

 My first day of high school was exciting.  I got up early, stood in front on my closet for ages deciding what to wear.  This would be the first impression a whole student body had on me, and I wanted to make a good impression.  I just wanted to appear normal; I didn’t want to stick out like a sore thumb.  I finally decided on a pair of jeans and a comfy shirt.  I walked into the high school and made my way to the counselor’s office to set up my schedule.  Somehow between the main office and the counselor’s they registered me as a sophomore instead of a freshman.  I learned early on that people don’t listen to outsiders very well.  After 20 minutes I finally convinced my counselor that I was in fact a freshman, I made my way to homeroom, which I was late for.  I walked in and the crazy girl from down the street was there.  It turns out that we had homeroom and first period together so we developed a friendship.  Carol introduced me to a lot of people and helped me find my classes.  I had a very productive day.  I didn’t get lost, met some cool people, and even had one guy ask for my phone number as I was leaving to catch my bus, but things just weren’t right.

I actually had to bundle up to walk to the bus stop and to my different classes.  But once I got to class the rooms were so hot that I would burn up, and I didn’t have any winter clothes.  People just weren’t as nice as they were in Texas.  The school I was now in was much bigger than my old one and somehow I got put into a lot of classes with delinquents whose sole purpose was to make my life miserable.    The first thing I did after I got home from school was to call Jessica.  She was my best friend and knew how hard it was for me to be surrounded by all these people who talked funny, ate something called a pepperoni roll, and actually wore sweater and jackets during the wintertime.  She loved hearing about all my little updates as things got better, the year progressed and how I even signed up to play soccer in the fall.  The summer passed by in a blur of phone calls, letters and one trip back to Houston.
 

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