Yet Another Life Change

(Second grade school picture. Immediately after this picture I requested bangs. I was mortified by how big my forehead was. I had bangs from this point until I was in college. That's how traumatized I was!)

So far in this project I have had monumental events in every post. In the first one I was born, then I was born again, then my brother was born. Well, in second grade no one was born, but it was yet another life changing year for our family.

In the middle of second grade, we faced one of the biggest life changes in our family. We left California. Not only did we leave California, but we moved to the complete other end of the world. We moved to the town of New Bedford, Massachusetts. This was because of a job transfer for my dad. For us, this was huge, as all of our immediate family lived in CA. Also, we lived directly next door to my dad’s parents and within an hour or two of my mom’s parents and step parents.

I remember my going away party from Manteca Christian School. I felt like the star of the whole world. I got to sit up on a desk while all of my friends hugged me. It was great. I think I got a present from my teacher too. Some of those little kids I had as pen pals for quite a while after we moved. I had to buy my own stamps with my allowance, and they cost a just a quarter.

We moved to a two-story red cape cod style home. The upstairs was not finished, so for the first while that we lived there, my brother and I shared a room. He was not yet sleeping through the night, so this was interesting.

Second grade was my first experience going to a public school. I’m not sure how long it lasted, but when I came home telling my mom about the non-biblical things I was learning, she decided to pull me out. I homeschooled for the remainder of second grade. I’m not sure how well that went, but in some ways it was a good thing. I had a horrible time learning subtraction, and I think it was only because I had all of that one on one time with my mom that I finally caught on. Incidentally, I grew up to be a math teacher.

Homeschooling was great after moving to this very historic area as well, because we were able to explore Boston, Plymouth Plantation, the Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, and all sorts of other natural and historic attractions in the area. This picture is from a family trip to Martha’s Vineyard. I was actually pouting because the trip was boring, but this ended up being one of the best pictures of me from my childhood. New Bedford was a fishing town occupied by a large number of Portuguese fishermen and their families. I had neighbor friends who were both from these types of families. They introduced me to new foods, including Portuguese bread, meringue and this beef and cabbage dish (ok, it was pretty nasty). We also enjoyed the sight of partially cleaned (aka quite bloody) fish hanging from our neighbor’s clothesline when we ate dinner at night after he returned from the sea. Now, when I say fish, these were not your average sized lake fish. They were huge, and it was a disturbing picture during meal time.

A few things stick out to me about life in New Bedford after growing up in California. The first is snow. This was not the first time I had seen snow, as my parents took me to Yosemite to see the snow when I was in preschool, but it was the first time I lived in it. I remember coming home from school on the bus one day when it had snowed during school. I was so new to the neighborhood I hardly knew where my home was, but with everything covered in white I couldn’t recognize anything. I wandered the neighborhood for what seemed like forever, and even sat down in the snow sobbing thinking I would be lost forever. I’m not sure how long it really was and I think I found my way home on my own, but it was scary.

The other memory was having our first Easter egg hunt in our new home. It was COLD! In CA it was warm at Easter, so we always had our hunts outside. We went outside with our winter coats on looking for eggs. After that first year, we had our egg hunts indoors.

This post is done as part of a 15 week blog project called Mommy’s Piggy Tales hosted by Adventure Mom Janna. For more information or to join the next set, visit the link in the button below.