Arrivals... There Goes the Neighborhood.

With living comes moving, and with moving comes new experiences, different settings, and a whole lot of trouble. Moving is a difficult concept for a lot of people to grasp--some can handle it more easily than others. I've had to move from house to house in my lifetime, but it wasn't a really emotional experience. Each time I've had to move though, I have to acclimate myself to a new school; that, I personally believe, is quite hard to place as 'fun'.

Originally I lived in the city as I started to develop into a toddler. When I was one or two, my family and I moved to the suburbs: closer to where my grandparents from my mother's side lived. Then we moved back to the city so I could start to attend school out there--as well as becoming closer to my father's work area and my mother's preschool job (her maternity leave was up). Quite the yo-yo-effect...I know. When I began to attend my first elementary school, it wasn't all that bad since I came in as a Kindergartener and not, like, a third grader or anything of the like. I found out my place in the social roster of school, made some friends, and had a good time.

...Until the end of sixth grade came about.

With the system of CPS  in the year 2008, a lot of elementary schools in my community were stopped at grade six--so you were forced to find a different school that had the middle school roster, which spelled another move for us. We ended up moving to where we currently live now and I attended a Catholic school: a rather dull, dreary-looking little place.  It was awkward since most of the students that were in my class (from seventh to eighth) had been together since Kindergarten and whatnot. I felt like the odd one out, the one who didn't belong... The 'new kid'. I think it's a human instinct to keep yourself guarded in new and unfamiliar terrain as you try to get a layout of this new territory you've stepped into.

My classmates then grew to the idea that I was a shy, timid girl who rarely ever spoke or got angry. And boy they don't know how wrong they were. Yes I was quiet the first week (as I was my first year of Whitney Young too), but once people got to know the loud, energetic, and snappy Lexi...well...I guess you can say "there went the neighborhood". I don't think my seventh and eighth grade class was ever the same again. We had laughed at inside jokes, sung together at church productions, graduated together, and each memory is so sweet in my mind--so precious--that I'm so very glad for the experience. 

Some...may not have the same luck as I have had. With the historical instance of Christopher Columbus coming to the "Americas", he turned the Native American's world completely upside down--a huge one-eighty degree spin. At first when he arrived, the Natives could have possibly thought of him to be a divine power sent from God himself who could do whatever to them if they did not please him correctly.

Honestly, I don't think they were too far from the truth--just not in the sense that he was God's right-hand man. Even if the Native Americans were nice to Christopher Columbus, even if they were appeasing to his wants or needs, he still turned their lives into an everlasting Hell. "...and the natives as slaves, how ever many their Highnesses require." Now it's not so much of the statement "there goes the neighborhood", but more so: "the neighborhood's gone".