by Jessica Oh, 16 year old high school student.

This personal essay, by Jessica Oh, was submitted to my teen website TheInSite.org.  If you’ve got some expressive writing you’d like to share, fiction, or non-fiction, poetry or whatever, please send it in, I’d love to read it! And maybe your words will get featured on my site.

Got that right!

There she was standing alone in the corner while everyone talked among themselves. She was not loquacious enough to fit in. All she heard was rambling going through one ear to the other. Petrified she was, she finally decided to smile at a little girl from across the room. However, the little girl made her feel alienated. She got glares from every inch around the room when the teacher introduced her. It was such a different view coming from another country. Hearing the different language soak into her brain, she was frightened. The room was filled with little kids running around enjoying themselves, excluding her. She just wanted fit in, she just wanted someone to talk to, and she just wanted a friend. Even though she would probably not understand one single word that came out of their mouths, she would casually act along. However, who would want to be friends with a girl who came from another country with no sense of their language or their culture?

Her life was perfect as it was until a trembling announcement was made by her parents, “We are moving!” She feared this day would come but tried as hard as she could to make it go away. When they made the announcement, it hit her like a bee sting. Right there and then, she knew her whole life would collapse right in front of her. The solid ground that was the foundation of her life was shaking and the buildings were crumbling. Her heart was torn apart, she was devastated. She never knew what it felt like to be betrayed and depressed. Not only was she moving to a new house but moving to a new school, new country, and new everything. She was moving half way around the globe and her parents expected her to be fine? Tears fell from her left cheek and then her right. She would have to make new memories and her old memories would be long gone. She thought, ‘but what can I do that can change their mind?’ However, she had to face the fact that there was nothing, absolutely nothing she could do to alter their mind. She sluggishly packed her belongings and took whatever she could but had to leave the memories behind.

Read the rest of what happened to Jessica as she faced the challenges of being a stranger in a strange land…