Personal Narrative: Moving To Oregon

Moving from the South to the Midwest was a huge change in my life. For my whole life I grew up to the southern hospitality and the tang of salt in the air since the beach was always less than 5 minutes away wherever I lived. Now I moved to a place where they flip you off to say hi, and the closest thing to an ocean is a sea of grass that seems to go on forever. Although I am now adapted to the change for the most part, it took me awhile to break in to the social norms of an average Midwest kids.

Just recently, I found out I was moving to another state. Knowing I have to leave everything behind was awful. I was halfway through eighth grade, starting the second semester, and I was doing great. My grades were all A’s and I was happy there with all my friends, Amber, Marianna, and Makayla. Our house was decent, my sister and I both had our own rooms anything I would ever wish for. My dad had been promoted to another job, where he was going to get paid more than what he was currently earning. It was an amazing opportunity for my family. I was glad for my dad, but I still felt bad for myself.

We packed everything we had into U-Haul in the safety the night provided. In about four hours of continuous packing our roots were lifted. We headed due south to a place called High Island, Texas. I had only been there one time before when I was little. The justifications of why we chose High Island, which was six hours from our home, was one of my aunt’s lived there and the distance from home was great.

We are off on the oregon trail, the Swansons kept their promise and asked the clines if we could join, after some negotiation and the conformation of me being a blacksmith, they said we could tag along, once we had left I thought all of our problems were over but I was wrong after a while we had reached a hill, and our oxen couldn't pull all of our supplies, we had to get rid of the piano my wife, that was enough for the oxen to slowly pull the wagon up and over the hill. We have reached the kansas river it had taken us two days to reach from independence, we had arrived just as the raft had left to take the last of a wagon train to the other side, once he returned he had told us it would be one dollar to cross after awhile we had

4,097 people. That was the population of Centralia Missouri in 2011. Moving had never been an issue for me, when your dad is in the military you get used to it. This time it was different than any other time. My parents were divorcing and my mom was forcing me to move to a town with only 4,097 people opposed to my home in Virginia with 225,401 people.

Anna had some concerns about the long trip, I agreed the trip is going to be long, almost all the way across the United States, but this would be good for us. We will have to leave behind my mother but she has my brother and sisters to look after her. After discussing it with Anna I decided that we will make the trip. The first thing I needed to get was a wagon. I took a trip down to my brothers farm to buy one from him.

I moved to Connecticut in the September of 2008 because my Dad had a job transfer. This was around the time that I started the second grade. I was introduced to so many people and they were all so nice to me. Six years later, I made countless friends and started to feel like Connecticut was where I wanted to stay forever. But in December of 2014, my Dad got a phone call from a company in South Jersey and they wanted him to work for them. At first, he worked 3 days in Camden, and the rest of the week in Connecticut. That was difficult though because we did not get to see him as often as we wanted to. My parents then sat my brother and I down and asked us if we wanted to move to South Jersey. I did not know what to think. After six years, I loved living in Connecticut and I wanted to stay there. They told us that it would be a lot easier to move down to Jersey instead of my dad traveling every week. My brother and I both agreed that this is what we are going to have to do. I can still remember that day though. It seemed liked the world was going to a scorching end. At least my world was. I started to tell my friends that

My change is about when I moved to Washington from Indiana. When my real dad dropped use off at our drop off spot. We want to a store, and got a drink. After that we started to drive away, I was so many emotions. The reasons for these emotions because I was moving closer to my family, I was losing my friends.My step-dad as driving the u hale and my mom was in the truck with me, my brothers, and my grandma was in the u hale with my step-dad. We also had a two cat's in cages and a turtle which was in a small cage with a tiny bit of water. We stopped at a lot of rest stops at first. I heard my mom say "we need gas" or " call your dad and tell him to stop there."

At the beginning of the month we stopped at the sweetwater river crossing because the land was ideal for camping and lavish for the animals. At nightfall we were attacked by another tribe of native americans, this battle was faster although more meaningful because 7 of my close friends died in the battle. Joseph and Tom both died in the battle leaving Tom, Dave and I left in the council. Joseph's death was early on in the battle, him and his family were slaughtered horrifically as joseph was fighting off the indians he watched as his daughter was decapitated and wife's throat was cut open as she screamed and pleaded, Joseph upon watching was distracted from the task at hand and was stabbed in the stomach and was left to bleed to death on the

In 2011 on a very cold December night, my dad told me something that I will never forget. My siblings and I were all sitting in my fathers very out dated apartment, eating hamburger helper and watching a movie on his small 32 inch t.v.

The time that we moved to Westcliffe, Colorado. I always remember the times when my parents talked about coming out to Colorado. They said it was a place where they always felt good, especially my mom. Most of the time when we were back there, I remember that my mom was sick in bed, because of the heat and humidity. It made her really sick, but when she came out here, she always felt much better. That was one of the main reasons, why we moved here, because my dad knew that mom would feel better here in higher elevation. So when the day came, I was glad we moved somewhere else.

January 2015, I moved to Bothell, Washington from Kirkland, Washington. Moving to a new city means moving to a new school. I did not like that idea. I already had a bunch of friends in Kirkland, I couldn't just leave them out of the blue like that. Plus, it was in the middle of the school year.

This time this trip is even longer because it took us 319 miles that made us walked for 11 days. On the 6th day, few of us heard a big clunk so we thought that something would have broke somehow. Some of us checked every single one of our wagons to see what had broke. Well right when we heard the clunk, the horse of the Cline Family had startled and stopped until the other animals stopped. So after we walked around, James Seiple found out that the tongue of the wagon had broke in half. So James Seiple started asking for help for the tongue of the Cline Family’s wagon. The rest of us came up to him to see what James Seiple wanted for us. “Help me with this tongue please, it snapped in half and I wanted some of your help.” James Seiple said. Then we all checked on our wagon to see if there is anything to fix the tongue. Then the father of the Colloni Family had grabbed an extra part for the wagon. The father of the Colloni Family came to James Seiple and tried to put it back together and the mother of the Mingo Family taped it up together and it is all fixed. Then we got back to our wagons and started walking to Fort Kearney. Later on the 8th day, a terrible hit us and the wind is gusting really hard with rain and hail. All of us got nothing to do. I got nothing to think

James has decided that he is sick of not having enough farmland and that we will start moving our family west to Oregon. We have been farming so close to people, they have basically been on our property. He heard that when we go to Oregon we get 640 acres of land when we start our new life, as long as we have a house built and farming started after a year of being there. After one short year of Matthew getting to know his grandparents and Hope only for three, we are sorrowfully saying that we will never be able to live with them again. My in-laws, James’ parents, already traveled and have sent back letters saying that their wagon train had a mass of hardships along the way, but that Oregon is beautiful and it is really spacious for farming.

The next day we wanted to head out early so we could make it to Colorado and have time to see some sites and visit my aunt and uncle. After we said thanks for letting us stay with my Aunt Alks and Uncle Pinakin's house, we were on our way. I wasn't really looking forward to the drive ahead because I remember how long it was the first time I had to make the trip, and it gets uncomfortable. The only thing I like when we go to Colorado is that we lose an hour. This was probably the most boring trip on our journey because most of the land we traveled was in Nebraska and it was flat and plain. There was nothing really significant about this trip until we got to Colorado. Flat land changed into mountains and country turned into city. That part of it was really interesting because it was like we could see the invisible line separating Colorado and Nebraska. It took us a little while to find my aunt in Golden, Colorado because the directions were a little hard to follow. I guess no one wanted to see anything because almost as soon as we were