My name is Anita and I am 25 years old. I was born and raised in Santiago, Chile, but moved to the U.S. for the first time at the age of 15. I hated it. I hated everything about it. I was a teenager in desperate need to fit in, to be like everyone else in a world where everything and everyone was different.
In what seemed like an overnight decision, my life was changed forever when my dad got a job as a teacher in Youngsville, North Carolina. In a little more than a month I was forced to pack my life in a couple of suitcases, and begin my journey to the unknown along with my little brother and my mom. My life would never be the same again.
Youngsville was a tiny town of 400 people that at the time did not even appear on the map. My school was about a million cows and 40 miles of nothing away from where I lived, in a slightly bigger town called Franklinton.
I still remember that first day of school as if it were yesterday. It was a foggy, dark day. I was nervous. I was so nervous thinking about what I would find, what it would look like, how I was going to communicate... What the hell was I doing there?
I went to the same high school where my dad worked, so we arrived much earlier than other students. When I got there the school was still practically empty, which made me feel a little bit better.
"When you meet the counselor, you have to say 'nice to meet you'" my dad said to me.
Back in Chile I had been exposed to the English language mainly through movies and television. If you went to the movies or watched cable, everything was subtitled so you inevitably learned something. Other than that I had taken about a year of English classes, but let's face it, how much can you really learn from a year of random English classes... So when I got to North Carolina, my level of English was basic to say the least. Therefore, my dad, who was an English teacher in Chile, was attempting to teach me basic sentences to get me through my first day.
The good thing about having your father with you on your first day of school at a foreign country is that you feel a little bit safer. What sucks about it is that the moment he leaves you behind, you feel more lonely and vulnerable than a preschooler.
After having a short meeting with the counselor, and now with my new schedule at hand, the three of us headed towards my first class of the day. By that time, most students were at the school, going to and coming from their lockers, laughing out loud and talking to their friends. However, as the minutes went by the crowd started becoming smaller and smaller. I particularly remember noticing that as soon as the bell rang anyone who was still in the hallway rushed to their respective classrooms. It was as if this bell indicated a nuclear bomb had just been released and anyone who was still in the hallway would be killed. In a matter of seconds everyone disappeared, and suddenly, just as it had been earlier that morning, it was only me, my father and the counselor.
The school was a big, square, brick building built in 1923. It looked like the typical school you would see in the movies on the outside. Inside, however, it looked old, dirty and gray. There were lots of glass doors at the entrance but only a few of them actually worked. As soon as you came in, the first thing you saw were the stairs, that were wide and split to the left and to the right halfway up. On the first floor, under the stairs, there was the library in the middle. To the left and to the right of the library there were two hallways with classrooms. Somewhere in between, I can't quite remember anymore, there was a door, a big metallic door. The counselor opened it, and as we went through it, I felt as if everything else was a poorly-kept stage, and I was now walking into the backstage area, which was a humid, gray, small area with another metallic door that lead us outside the building.
Now we were in the back of the building, outside for sure, though there was no green to be found. Instead, on my left side there was a brick wall that belonged to the library. On my right side, there was another brick wall that belonged to the right hallway with the classrooms. Ahead, there was another brick building. This one looked newer and had only one floor. As soon as we walked inside this building I knew for sure it had been built much after the building we had just left behind. It smelled better, and it just overall looked better. Suddenly I found myself wondering how many generations of people had gone to this school and had attended classes in that other building.
My thought was interrupted when we stopped in front of a door. This was it. The last door in the building before going outside again. My heart started pounding fast, so hard and so fast that I thought it would come out of my chest. As the counselor knocked on the door, I truly felt like this was my second day of preschool, when I already knew that my dad was going to leave me there, with a bunch of strangers.
A full-figured, blond lady with very deep eyes open the door. When she saw us, she stepped outside for a moment and closed the door behind her. From what I could infer, the counselor and my dad explained my situation to her. What happened after that is no longer clear to me. All I know is that from one moment to the next, I was standing inside that classroom with this woman, in front of a class full of high school kids staring at me. The woman was explaining to them who I was, what I was doing there and asking for someone to translate things to me. She sat me next to a blond girl who was taking Spanish II at the moment. Her Spanish was so basic and broken, that actually it was better to have her talk to me in English. As she struggled to finish a sentence, Spanish book in hand, laughing with the other students sitting in the vicinity, I knew that it would be a loooong couple of years.
