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On a more personal level...
Well, if you didn't exactly like the staid, formula me on my original page, I guess I'll give you a bit more on this page. I'm not only those things I wrote on the previous page, after all; I'm so much more.I was born in Germany, but lived in California from when I was 2 until I was in second grade. We moved in the middle of that year to Germany, and it was a painful leavetaking; I cried as I watched my best friend Janeia McClain fade out of view. I never had a best friend from then until college.
I was put into a DODS (Department of Defense, on a military base) elementary school called Attebarry Elementary School on Attebarry military base. I had been raised in a Christian school, and we'd just moved halfway around the world, so I was understandably shy. However, I never got over that shyness; I became the low man on the totem pole, more of a hanger on than anybody's friend. I stayed in that school until my fifth grade year, then I went to a private Baptist school.
I hated that school. Oh, it had nothing to do with the teachers or the teaching, or even that we had to learn a Bible chapter each month. No, all (three) of the teachers there were really nice. It was the students. By then, being the outcast at my last school for two years, I'd chunked out a bit, and I was pointedly shy but still wanted to be part of the crowd. In the beginning things were okay, but I was always picked last, I had to insinuate myself into games to be allowed to play, and once again I was low man on the totem pole. Then my sixth grade year came along, and I got a crush.
Let me tell you a little about myself. When I was younger, I wore my heart on my sleeve; when I felt something, I couldn't hide it. If I was in love, or thought I was, I mooned over the boy and followed him everywhere; I've grown out of that now (I'm so closed up around guys I like they must think I hate them), but at the time the guy and the people around me noticed. It didn't help that I'd admitted it. And instead of being mature like people would right now, they decided to play with poor little me. The guy would always flirt with me, then he and his cronies would laugh when I blushed. I got over that crush quickly, but they wouldn't stop hassling me; he'd always try to sit by me, and when I'd leave he'd follow me and ask why I wouldn't let him sit by me. I was so glad when my parents decided, three months after that year started, that we'd be going back home to the States.
Oh, really, my whole Germany trip wasn't bad. I had a blast, really; my parents wouldn't let me or my sister have it any other way. We went to castle after castle, museum after museum, monument after monument. We weren't confined to Germany; all of Europe was our playground (to a point; we weren't rich or anything). I went to the Louvre, to the Eiffel Tower, skiied on glaciers, stayed in a hotel in Spain with a water slide and many pools in the back. I went to East Germany at least once a year, and we were actually there the day the Berlin Wall came down. I have some wonderful memories of that time; I just wish that I'd been old enough to truly appreciate it. At the time, I simply wanted to go home to my friends back in the States.