by Saadio Aden
The alarm clock went “ding….ding… ding.” I woke pretending I couldn’t hear it, because I didn’t want to get up. My mom was yelling at my sister and me, “Get up girls it’s time to go school.” I didn’t understand why she was so excited. I miserably dragged myself out of bed; I just wanted to crawl and hide and the blanket. It was a cold day in March 1999, I was fourteen years old, and it was my first day of school in America.
I was scared. My sister and I got ready, but we were not happy. We knew we had to go to school, and mom would not let us stay home. We walked to the bus stop right across the street from our house. A few minutes later, a big yellow bus pulled up right next to us. We looked at each other and my sister said, “Here we go.”
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