Never in my life did I think I would have to pack up my childhood and move 3000 miles from the only place I ever knew as home. Around September, my father told my family and I that were going to leave California and move to Virginia. Thanks to my brother, who was about to start middle school, my father insisted the timing was perfect to enroll us into a better school system. Though I was excited about going into a new school and making new friends, I was nervous about the whole transition of moving to a new state.

By the end of  July, everything we owned became condensed in boxes and placed into the moving truck. Anything we wanted to have for the first few months at our apartment was stacked in the back of our the minivan.
I don't remember a lot about the first few days, except seeing a lot of trees and a lot of passing cars. One thing I do know for sure is that  I slept through almost all of Utah.  About halfway through the trip, we arrived in Grand Junction, Colorado. When we got to our hotel, there was a huge lightning storm that seemed to be right above us.  It looked as it was raining streaks of white and blue fire. My brother and I sat in the back part of the van with the trunk door up and just stared in awe. He stated, ¨This is the coolest things I have ever seen.¨ I nodded and gazed at it until we had to go to bed. These kinds of nights are the ones that I love looking back on. Specifically, this was one of the few nights that my brother and I really bonded and talked about what we were expecting once in Virginia. We became closer in that one moment with the storm as a focal point.

Out of all the items we decided to bring across the country, we kept our goldfish, named Goldy, super creative as a seven year old I know. He was one of those bagged goldfish you win at the state fair playing the ring toss bottle game or throwing darts at balloons. Usually they die within a week of getting them  yet somehow, he has survived 13 years in our family. He traveled in a Home Depot construction bucket in between my brother and I’s seat.. The constant noise of the motor running is still engraved in my brain. Many things were dropped in the bucket, as predicted. The most ironic and memorable item that fell in was our copy of Finding Nemo. Thankfully, both survived.

Somehow I endured a 13 hour ride while road tripping across the country. The boredom increased more after watching all the movies that we brought with us for our trip. With all the pit stops, the day seemed to drag on. The route took us north into Missouri and all the way down to Kentucky. The closer we got to Virginia, the closer I was to never having to sit in the car again.

Crossing the Virginia state line, the anticipation of arriving to our future home increased.  We rolled into the our temporary home, an apartment complex,  at 4:25 pm. At the time, we couldn't find a house that felt like home so we decided to stay at an apartment complex until we could do so. My nerves began to increase more and more as I realized that I didn't know where I was. Since I was  in a completely different state, the atmosphere was unusual to me. The people were definitely nicer and way more polite. Words like ¨y´all¨ and ¨ma'am¨ sounded so foreign to me.

Looking around at the empty boxes, reality set in. This is where I will be for the majority of my life, if all works out. Nerves settled as I became comfortable with my surroundings. When school started a month later, I made friends being the “new kid”. I began calling our new house home.  There were going to be more to come that are going to frighten me, but I am ready for whatever is to come.