2025/Ethan-

In my experience as a military child, I have moved only twice in my entire life. Virginia to Okinawa and Okinawa to Iwakuni. I started out in Virginia Beach. It was a very important place in my life not just because it was my first home, but because of the family I was surrounded by. In Virginia, almost my entire side of my dad’s family lived in the same neighborhood and town. Family is very important to me and is a big part of what made me who I am today as a person. Being around all my cousins, aunts, uncles, and other relatives was great for me. I had a couple of friends that I have known since elementary school that also made Virginia a great place to live. I was able to live there almost my entire life until the year 2021 when I learned that I was moving for the first time as a military child. For me, it was very hard to leave my friends, home, and family, which as I mentioned earlier is a very important part of my life. I obviously didn’t have a choice or say in what was bound to happen so all I could do was mope and accept that I was leaving. The part that made it even sadder for me at the time was that we would be stationed in Japan so visiting home wasn’t going to be frequent. I was also very nervous about going somewhere new and the fact that I would know absolutely no one in Okinawa. I didn’t have a lot of friends before, so I imagined it would be very tough for me. But to my surprise, after a couple of months, I didn’t think about the negative parts of military travel and it actually made it a good thing because I was making new friends, enjoying a new place like Japan, getting into sports for the first time and just trying to enjoy life. I obviously thought about home all the time, but life as a military child has made my life better on who I am now.