Personal Narrative: Moving To Springtown

One of the scariest things a person can do is move away from their hometown. When a person moves from what they’re familiar with they must relearn almost everything. When I was twelve I moved 3,928 miles away from my hometown of Springboro, OH to London, England. However, everyone in my family has had a significant move to an unknown place. My grandmother’s father was in the Navy, and she moved from Ohio to West Virginia during her teens. My grandfather moved from Ohio to California during his preteens. It was time for my big move, and as a result I grew into the person I am today.
I was eleven when my father told me the news that I was moving. At first I didn’t believe him, and treated the move as a joke. It was when my dad took my brother
and I to get our first passports that I realized this was real. That next year I was going to move to London, England. I was going to leave all of my friends behind and start junior high in a brand new school. Most kids may have been excited to move to another country, but I was terrified. How was I supposed to make all new friends in an entirely different country? How was I supposed to just start over?
When the moving trucks came and started taking our stuff, I tried to cram as many of my toys as I could into the boxes. I didn’t want to forget who I was in Springboro, and I didn’t want to leave anything behind. I was devastated when my parents started taking out the stuff that I didn’t need. It made the fact that I was leaving so much behind more real. I wasn’t going to be home for at least six months. That thought alone made me beg for my parents to change their minds.
Despite my pleas and tantrums, my dad bought the one way tickets to London, England.
When we arrived in England our rooms were already set up. Mine was nice; it was bigger than my room in Springboro. It didn’t feel like home though. None of it did. For the rest of the summer I tried to adjust to my new environment, but I still desperately missed my old life.
Once school started it was a whole new ball game. There were so many kids from so many different cultures it was hard to keep track of them all. Everyone at my new school helped me feel so much better about moving. I went to an international school, so everyone who attended had been through the same thing. Everyone worked to make sure everyone felt safe and welcome. At school, England was finally starting to feel like a place I didn’t mind living in.
As time went on I became more comfortable in my new community. I joined a lot of clubs and sports teams. I got to travel across Europe and meet so many different people. By the time I was a freshman in high school I had been to at least 10 different countries, knew greetings in at least 5 languages, and saw so many things that I never would have in Springboro. I even became someone’s mentor and guided them throughout their journey at ACS. I couldn’t imagine my life in Springboro anymore. My life was here in London,
England.
My family moved back to Springboro, Ohio in 2014. The place I had missed so much seemed so little now. The friends I left had changed a lot, but so had I. When I left I was a little girl, when I came back I was a young adult who had seen the world. I experienced things that no one in Springboro would ever be able to. Suddenly Springboro didn’t seem like such an important place in the small world.