By Eileen McKinney,Auburn Middle School

It was a pretty sad moment. My dad was leaving for a job way across the country in a town called Hope, British Columbia. But I knew I would see him in a couple of weeks. But my mom and my sister and I were all teary eyed when we left him at the train station in Portland, Maine. I brushed my brown hair out of my eyes and left the station. When we settled back into the car, my mom realized that she had forgotten to give my dad any cash. She asked my sister and me if one of us would go back in and give it to him but we refused because we didn’t want to say goodbye all over again.

To try and cheer us up we went shopping in Portland but it didn’t work.

The thought of moving never came into my mind, because I knew my dad would be there for several months and then be back. But when my mom told me that my dad loved Hope, B.C. and wanted to move there, I thought my dad was plain nuts! I told my mom to knock some sense into him.

From then on I became very worried. My mom started looking at houses online. I was scared when I saw my mom looking at the houses but she told me that nothing was decided yet. We still had to visit and see what this place was really like. I was sad whenever I thought of moving, just the thought killed me. I never really liked changes, especially huge life changes.

I began to think about all the stuff I would miss if I moved. I was looking forward to moving up to Auburn Middle School and all the things that would happen like parties and sleepovers. I hated the fact that I would be moving over 2,000 miles away. Being me, I wrote a list of reasons why NOT to move. Some of the reasons were really stupid and I knew they wouldn’t work but I thought it was worth a try. Here are some of my reasons: my cats will suffer, I don’t want to change schools, I like my friends, I like my house and my bedroom, I will be scared for life. OK maybe that last one is going a little overboard.

Then it was that time when I had to visit the place we might move to. After a whole day of travel by plane, we arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia. When we got through airport security my dad was there waiting for us. When we got away from the airport I began to realize there was a huge world outside of Auburn. On our way to Hope I thought everything was so amazing! Mountains, mountains, and more mountains. Trees, trees and more trees. The landscape was wide open. When we arrived in Hope I was amazed. Hope was a small town surrounded by mountains.

The town was bustling with people. There were kids playing in the park. We turned onto the main drive where all the stores were. It was sunny and comfortable weather. The more we explored Hope, the more I realized it wasn’t such a bad place after all. I should have given it more of a chance. But still, I didn’t want to move.

On the second day we were there my mom and dad called my sister and me into the kitchen of the house we were staying in and told us that we weren’t going to move. I screamed in happiness. They said that it just wasn’t right for the family to move. They didn’t want us to be unhappy. I learned that sometimes I don’t give things a chance. It’s cool to try new things. Change can be good and fun. Even if we did move I would still have my family.

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