Most people have moved before sometime in their life. For me, it was only two times. The first move was an international move from Vietnam to the United States of America, when I was barely 8 months old. At the time, it was just my mom, dad, and me, moving across the world to start a new life. Something have learned from moving is that it is hard to change your life, home, and environment but if you give it some time, nothing is impossible. In the beginning of 2005, my family decided to move away from California.
My dad was offered a job in Phoenix, Arizona for Casino Arizona’s Black Jack dealer. When I heard the news that we were moving, I was upset, angry, furious, vexed. We just started our lives here and my dad wanted to pack everything up and leave. I was four at the time and I had started preschool, making new friends and now I have to leave all of that to move to Arizona. I didn’t know what to expect life in Arizona would be like. I was not happy. I cried for days because California is my home, this apartment was my home. Then I remembered, my family is my home.
There was a bright side to moving to Arizona. I could finally get out of the cold weather. Every time I went outside, my jacket follows me around. When we go to Arizona, we can actually live in a house instead of an apartment because living in California is expensive. At the end of July of 2005, my family packed everything up and put all of our things in a moving truck. We packed up our beds, dressers, TVs, couch, fridge, dining table, chairs. Somehow, we managed to fit all of these in one moving truck. How did we manage to fit all of those furniture in one truck?
One of our last days in California, my family had a goodbye party. The next day, my uncle drove the moving truck and my family drove our car to Phoenix, Arizona. The four of us plus my puppy at the time Finally, after it felt like an eternity in the car, we made it “home”. We drove straight to the new house we were going to live in. This is where we encounter some bumps in the road. The house we bought was not finished building. The construction workers told my dad it would take them three months to finish building the house. My mom’s sister’s let us stay at their house for a few months.
Since we could only have the moving truck for a couple of days, we put all of our furniture in my aunt’s front living room. Luckily, her house was big enough for four of us plus her own family. That summer was one of the hottest summer I had ever experienced. I lived in California for the first four years of my life and I haven’t experienced anything above 90 degrees. I was sweaty. Heat was intense. I got sun-burned. Sun was scorching. The temperature was one million degrees high and I thought my face was about to melt off like popsicles on a sunny day.
Even though it was hot, I liked that the sun was always out. But that summer, not everyone could adapt to the Arizona heat. My puppy didn’t want to drink water which caused him to be dehydrated and grew weak everyday. One day didn’t moved. My puppy died and it ruined my summer. While the house was almost finished building, we buried him in the corner of the backyard. That’s how I spend my first Arizona summer. As the new school year began to start, my dad thought it was a good idea to enroll me into next year to secure my spot for kindergarten.
We were told that Arizona’s school policy only allowed six year olds to start kindergarten. In California, we started school a year earlier. They asked if I wanted to join preschool, but I already finished preschool. So I had to wait a year. For me, I was happy. I got a year off of school. After three months, the house was finished being built. The house was humongous. The house was perfect. The house was ours. We had a lot of help furnishing the house. At the end, we could finally call it home.
This was a very important memory because I thought I would never feel at home anywhere else besides California. My life and home was always in California but I should accept that not everything will stay the same. People can change, attitude can change, personalities can change, life can change, home can change. Sometimes change is good and I will remember that. Fast forwarding to eleven years from the big move, life in Arizona is better than I thought. My family is now a family of five and an addition of a dog. We are still living in the same house and we love it with all our hearts.
