2023/Kaiden-23599

Very few Americans are born outside of America although I was born in Japan as an American citizen. Although I only stayed in Japan for four years until I moved to the U.S. to North Carolina. I was in the U.S. for about eight years until my dad told me that we were moving back to Japan. I remember how bad I didn’t want to go back to Japan because I was going to leave my friends here. I mean I already knew my dad worked in the military and there were certain places my dad had to stay for a couple of months. I didn’t really understand why my dad had to go but it happened. It's been like this for a couple of months where there’d be times we stay at a certain place, and then move to another state. I thought this was normal for people to go through since I was young and thought everyone had the luxury of having a military dad/mom.

There’d be times where I transferred to a lot of schools and would leave before the end of the year, and I didn’t even make a lot of friends at the time. When I finally moved to the 5th place of my life(Japan). I learned that there were others like me who also moved a lot of places and had to leave their friends as well. And that's when I realized that there were others like me, and that I wasn’t just alone through the process. I learned that there were others like me when I moved to Japan.

I learned from a teacher when she mentioned that we were privileged to be military children, and that we move a lot more than other kids. And how we are lucky to be in a military family. This made me realize that not every other kid has the things that most Americans have, and don’t really move as frequently as us.