Walking along the neatly cut grass I place my foot into the asphalt. Birds are nesting on the trees, dogs are running around looking for buddies. Occasionally I pass by a few hispanic loan cutters who were incredibly nice to me -- they said hello. It is 7:30am. I am going to school. Cars constantly zooms over me. And I can feel the eyes inside of cars that pass by me. They are going at 40 miles per hour, I am going at 2 miles per hour. Do I feel that I belong there? I do not. I try to, but my own insecurities prevents me from making the best out of an incredibly successful school system.
After I leave that town where my relatives reside, I come to Westchester, New York. I then was able to see many things that I never saw before, expose to people with ideas I never thought of before, and do things I never done before. It is a vast different world here. It is clean and quiet. People are overly civilized to each other. Everything here is photoshoped picture quality. Unlike my home country, there are no cows walking on the street. Unlike my relatives' town, there are no garbage on the side of the streets. Unlike any other places I have been to, there are huge houses!
The place where I can feel the most change is the schools. My fellow classmates in the hall way saying things like these:
"Stop by to my house in the Hamptons, (random girls' names) and I plan to stay there for a couple of days."
"She is going to do work for Bloomberg this summer because her dad knows him."
"My family is going to Paris again, I am so board of it."
As oppose to my older classmates saying things like these:
"Are you going to go home today? You mom is going to kill you."
"(Random boys' names) were part of that gang, they beat Michael up."
"Are you from China? Chin Chang Kin Kong Wan Wa..."
I do feel safer in my new environment, because I don't have to witness people getting beat up everyday. This picture perfect utopia, however, is constantly questioning my existence and position. People in this town do not walk, they have their own method of transportation -- cars. People do not yell at their kids, they have their babysitters do that. People do not cook, they have reservations. And me? I do not have cars because even my whole family cannot provide a car for ourselves. We do not have babysitters because cannot afford one. We do not make reservations for dinner because it is cheaper to make dinner at home after grabbing friday sale groceries.
I do not fit into that environment because my family background and my financial situation prevents me from doing that. I ended up spend the rest of my middle school years and high school years living like an oddball, rejecting everyone's invitations to their birthday parties because I do not have anyone to drive me, cannot afford tiffany gifts to the birthday girl, do not have a dress that is dressy enough for those events.
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