"What a long strange trip its been." It all started in January of 1997. My dad aproached me and my older brother and asked us what we thought about moving. He said that he had recieved a job offer, to work in Conneticuit. He would still be with the same company. I was totally against the idea. I thought that it was outragous. On the other hand my brother didnít mind at all. Since he would be going off to college, he wouldnít be living at home anyway. My mother also thought that it was a good idea. She said that change is a good thing, and that we should accept it.

My parents thought about the idea for a week or so. They discused all of the pros and cons. Their main concern was me. My younger sister was eight and it would be fairly easy for her to ajust. My brother had hardly anything to say about the situation. All he cared about was getting away from my parents and being a free, college student. I tried to pursued my parents away from the idea many times. I said that it is not easy for a high school student to change schools, and communities. My parents said that my dad would be making more money, and that would help them because of my siblings and my college education. Ultimitly, I had no say in the situation.

It was soon after this that my parents decided that we would be moving. This ment that my dad would be starting at his new office, since he was the new manager. He started working March first, in Brewster New York. His company gave him a condo- minium to live in. He made the four and a half hour commute back home every Friday night, and monday morning, just because he wanted my brother, sister and I to finish the school year. It was at this point that I started feeling how other people felt, not just myself. I realized that my parents made the right decision for the good of the family, but I still didnít like the idea of leaving the only thing I ever knew.

My dad was working on finding a suitable town in the area after work almost every day. Eventually he decided on Newtown, Conneticuit. mainly because it was similiar to our old town, and it had a good school system. Now came the hard part, finding a house. My dad decided not to build a house, because he found it too much of a pain, experiencing it once was enough. My family made many trips to the area, to look at houses. Many offers fell through, before we found one we really liked. We were almost possitively moving there when it also fell through. It came down to a week and we needed a house. We found one and luckily got it.

July first, 1998. It was olly about two weeks before moving day. I still had not faced the fact that we were moving. It was not a reality because we didnít need to do much preparing. The moving company would do everything. I hadnít told many people about me moving, only my good friends. I felt embarresed about it for some reason. I didnít want anyone to know.