From Hawaii, Here.

I have moved many places. But one of the most meaningful move was when me, my mom, and my dad moved from hawaii to Portland Oregon.

Almost everything was different about Portland. The weather, the people, the school, and just the place in general. At the time I was just beginning my 13 years of goodness and my sister Olivia was still not born. My parents, as I later learned, also had a hard time moving the jobs as teachers at punahou school in Hawaii. The school had been really the only thing I remember today. I remember running around in the playground and looking through the windows of the classrooms, thinking: "oh no, I'm next!" Our friends in hawaii, named Kalial and Noah. They were my best friends and I missed them a lot.

I have returned to see hawaii and our friends once and that was one of the most memorable trips of my entire life. I remember everything we did from beginning to end. i remember going to the house of Kalial and Noah, and they had this huge inflatable mattress in the middle of their room. There was a bunk bed in one corner and a mess of toys and a computer in the other. The same day we went down to the water where we surfed for a good long while and ate dinner, where I lost a ball we had been playing with to the sea but Noah's dad jumped in and returned with the ball in hand. After two days of play we went to punahou and it was like returning to our old house. We went back to the playground that had been so fun those many years ago and I jumped in a little pond they had there scraping up my knee.

After all these years I still remember our house and our school. And I love thinking that that was the place that I was born. And it makes me feel more open, more different. And I hope that I will be able to return some day again to relive those memories.
Alec Murray