2025/Eliana-31448

I was sitting on my front lawn admiring the beautiful maple trees that sat flowing in the light breeze. For some back story I was 10 years old, currently living in Virginia. My dad was in the Navy and we were 2 weeks before leaving our perfect home. I loved it there we had everything: we had a zip line, a rope swing, and a never ending forest that led to our “secret base” all in our backyard! I didn’t want to leave. But we had to, I was OK with moving a little far away, but what I didn’t know was that later that night my parents were going to inform me we were moving to Guam.

“Why are we moving, like A BILLION miles away!!!” I yelled. “ Ya why are we leaving here!!!!” my little sister added, she was only 7 or 8 at the time, so she didn’t k now why we were leaving. And this probably didn't make any sense for her. My older sister however stayed quiet. “OK, OK.” My mom started to reassure us, “It is only 8,034 miles girls.” My mom said calmly showing us here phone for proof. We all slumped upstairs to continue our packing, I could tell my mom was stressed about this and we didn’t help.

By the time my dad had gotten home we all were back to our normal. Us three girls were outside soaking up all the fun we could, before we left. I went to bed that night thinking about what could happen. I woke up and the next week was much like the one before: playing outside, occasional fighting, and overall trying to soak up our home. The last day before we left our parents took us to a theme park, my mom had put our house on the market that day. Almost immediately we got a notification that someone was interested in buying. We set a date and enjoyed these last few hours.

When it was time to meet the man he ended up buying and got all of our stuff and hopped in a van (that process obviously took about 3 days), Once we got to the air port and started the process of boarding my little sister was right by my side and I did my best to answer all the questions she had. My older sister however was still silent, which I thought was odd. I studied her face, it looked slightly red and puffy. Almost like she was crying…

So we embarked on our journey running from one flight to the next. But after a 23 long hour flight we made it to our destination. It was hot and humid, I hated it already. We were forced to wait in small unit areas for the men to know my father was here. Once we finally got to leave we got in my dads friend’s van. He drove us to the commissary where I threw up, and my dad popped in to get some essentials.

We got to our temporary home and settled in. I had to share a room with my younger sister (which I was OK with), And my older sister called dibs on the couch. We all were jet lag from the plane so we pretty much just slept the rest of the day until we all got hungry and had dinner. The next week or so was pretty smooth, just finding out the neighborhood and making new friends.

My mom then took us school shopping and we had to go to school in 2 days. We started school that Wednesday, and I cried a lot When I got home I started crying that I wanted to be home schooled, because “real school” was too stressful.

I got used to it though. The usual routine, and now I have been happy in Guam for almost 2 years and met some great people in my time.