New School

New School?!?

It was a Thursday and Julie was waiting for her mom to come and get her from school. Her mom said she was almost there so she went to get her bag and all her things together. When her mom pulled up Julie got in the car and started heading home. She fell asleep and about and hour later she got home. She had something called youth conference, which was for church so that was the only reason why her mom had come and picked her up. Julie usually caught bus and so she was really happy when her mom came and got her. When Julie got home she quickly changed and got back in the car where her mom was waiting. The youth conference had started at 4:30ish, but Julie never got there until 5:30ish. When Julie got there they were just eating dinner and so she went and sat by all her friends. While sitting there, her friends were helping her catch up in all the drama that they had been going through and Julie realized just how much she missed all her friends and hanging out with them.
It all started in sixth grade. Julie and her best friend, Lei, were at school walking to the cafeteria. They started talking about graduating from Elementary and what they were going to do next year when they go to Kahuji Intermediate. Lei chose that time to tell Julie that she was going to try for Persona, a very famous high school. Julie didn’t want Lei to leave her, especially now since she wouldn’t know half the people in seventh grade, since other people were coming from different schools. Lei told Julie that she should try out with her. So Julie went home and asked her mom, Tanya, if she could try with Lei. Her mom said, "we'll see" but never ended up letting Julie try out. So Julie just forgot about it. and went to Kahuji and met more people there. She loved it at Kahuji. She never wanted to leave. She got good grades and she loved the people there, everyone was super close. So when Lei came to her again in eighth grade and asked her again if she wanted to try out for Persona (Lei hadn’t gotten in), Julie was a little hesitant. She didn’t want to leave but she didn’t want her best friend to either. So she said that she would ask. So she went home and asked her mom again. Her mom said "we'll see" again and Julie thought that meant no. So Julie just went on with her life and forgot about it. The next weekend though, Tanya told Julie that she would be trying out for Persona the next month and that she needed to prepare. Julie thought that she would never get in so she didn’t really prepare. She only took a few practice tests every once in a while and just left it after that. The next month came around and Julie and Lei drove an hour to get to Persona and prepared to take the test.
When it was time for them to go inside, Leis mom, Aunty Sharlei (who had driven them), said goodbye and went to the mall to wait for them to finish testing. Lei and Julie went inside to take their test and that’s when Julie thought that she needed to try her best. Her parents had after all paid $100 just for this test she was taking. So when she got her test she started to answer as best she could.
After the test, Julie and Lei went outside to the car, which was a dark green suburban and they went to McCarly's, a fast food restaurant and then headed back home. When they got home it was still early so they decided to go the beach. All the worries from the day had disappeared. They had fun for the rest of the day. A few months later, the test results got in. Tanya had gone to go check the mail while Julie and Jill went to Feedland, a grocery store. They were just about to leave when Julie got a text message from Tanya that said "Julie you got into Persona!" The first thing that Julie replied was "did Lei get in?!" A few minutes later Julie and Jill were checking out all of their groceries and in walked Tanya and Aunty Sharlei. They walked over to Julie and Jill and Aunty Sharlei was super exited that Julie had gotten in. After everything had calmed down, Aunty Sharlei turned to Julie and said, "aww, I'm sorry but Lei never got in". After that Julie was very sad and didn’t really want to go to Persona after that.
Julie ended up going to Persona and she had to take summer school. During her summer she went camping with her ward and on the last night of camp, her mom came and told Julie and Jill that they were all (their whole family) going on a trip to Utah since Tanya's dad was really sick and they didn’t think he would make it for that much longer. Because Julie still had to go to summer school (the dean had said so since Julie was in Cridge, a program for new kids coming from public school), she ended up skipping the first week of summer school. Her and her dad came back after spending only a week in Utah and then they came back. Little did they know that that would be the last time that they would see Tanya's dad on Earth. Julie had to come to summer school and her dad, John, had to work so it worked out perfectly. Everyone else stayed though.
Julie's first day of summer school was really scary. She started at 7:30 and she caught a ride with her friend. They left at about 5:45 and there was one more guy that was in the same program as Julie so she new that she wasn’t alone. But then again, this would be her first day while he had already been going to summer school for about a week. When they got to school, it was around 6:45 so she went to "Old School Hall" which was a place that she had been told to go to. She had to find Mrs. K, who was the person in charge of the Cridge program. Julie didn’t know what to expect when she opened the door. So when she opened the door, she was actually pretty surprised. There was a big room with a smaller closed room towards the back. The small room towards the back was Mrs. K's office. When she saw Julie she told her that they would have to go and get her laptop from another place so she was glad that Julie came early.
After they got her laptop, they went to Bringaham, which was where her first class was. They had a kind of "homeroom" class for the first 15 or so minutes. When Julie walked in, she was the first person there because she was still early. She was introduced to some of the girls that were waiting right outside the door, but it was kind of awkward. Mrs. K then had Julie copy down her schedule and then it was time to start class. Julie had no idea what to do during her first class. First she was introduced to everyone and she was really bad at remembering names so she couldn’t remember any of them. So her first day was kind of scary and she didn’t really like it. Her second day was a little better but not by much. The rest of the week actually got better because the whole summer school, her teachers were helping her a lot.
Julie had a schedule just like everyone else pretty much. After homeroom, they went to math, which was in Poohai, another building right next door. They had three classes in all, not including homeroom. They were all in either Bringaham or Poohai. They had English, Math, and Social Studies. At the end of the day they would all get together (they were divided in half during most of the "small" classes and together in all of the "large" classes. They would then do things where they got to know each other or they would do small projects. They would get a few 15-minute breaks here and there every once in a while. The teachers wanted the students to get used to this kind of schedule, which is what it was going to be like during the school year. They had two semesters in six weeks (well Julie technically had five since she missed the first week).
Julie didn’t really like going home that much because she missed her mom, but she didn’t want to stay at school either. When she went home though, her dad was usually outside working and she would just do homework. They would sometimes eat out since neither one of them could really cook. One weekend, John surprised Julie by saying that she was going to go and sleep over her cousin's house. Julie was really happy because this would be the first time she would be going out with one of her friends the whole summer. She had a really good time but she figured that her dad would need her help at home so she went home and she did chores. Her and her dad actually did get closer to each other and they had a lot of fun during the summer with just the two of them. Even though Julie ended up liking summer school and hanging out with her dad, she was glad when summer school was done and her mom was coming back on the same day to so she was really happy for that. She was pretty sure that her dad was also relieved.
Right after summer school on her last day her dad picked her up and they went to the airport and picked Tanya and the kids up. They were all happy to see each other so on the ride home they caught up with each other. When they got home it was almost eight and all of them wanted to get out of the house (yes, even though they just got back) and so Tanya took the kids to Laie, the next town over from where they live and the place that everyone liked to hang out at. They had a lot do fun there and Julie got to see a lot of her friends that she hadn’t gotten to see all summer.
Julie started school almost a month after all of her friends so when her mom and all her friends and family went back to school, Julie didn’t really have anything to do. She would go sometimes to visit with her friends but she couldn’t do that every day so she would go help her mom in her class room (she taught second grade) or she would go help babysit at her auntie's house. After school was done she would go hang out with her friends and stuff like that.
When school started up again, she wasn’t all that exited. She was actually kind of scared, even though she already knew a lot of people from summer school. She was almost half an hour late though, on her first day because of traffic. She had math and they didn’t really do anything, in a lot of her classes she didn’t really know anyone, just like one or two people. By the end of the day, she wasn’t really that scared anymore but she still didn’t really like it either. She ended the day with study hall, which was with all the kids that she took summer school with. She was happy to see everyone and they played a kind of game to end their first day of school.
The rest of the week wasn’t that bad. She made new friends and she kind of had a lot of breaks. By the end of the semester, she had a lot of new friends but she still missed her old friends so every time she had a chance, she would go and hang out with them. She didn’t really like school either. She missed going to Kahukunui, which was her old school and she didn’t like having to ride on the bus almost two hours just to go to a school that she didn’t really like. She would always complain to her mom and dad that she didn’t like Persona and that she wanted to go back to Kahukunui. Her parents were also kind of going into debt because they had to pay a lot for Julies schooling and so Julie tried to use that against them to let her go back. But they kept on saying to give it one more year. Its now almost the end of the year and Julies parents seem to be leaning towards the side of Julie going back to Kahukunui. Julie still doesn’t like going to Persona but she's holding on. She sometimes wonders though what she ever did to deserve to be here. She knows that its good for her future but she is only living in the present so she doesn't really care about her whole "future thing". She sometimes even cries herself to sleep at night, just because of all of this. Tala