What it's like being a military child

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It's a cycle every three years. You know, you get to a new school you make friends
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you kind of finally settle in and then it's okay, "Hey we have to go somewhere else now."
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I've been to three different bases, but I've been all over the world, basically.
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It's that it's hard because when you move you like lose a lot of friends and you're always the new kid at every new school that you go to.
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Their dad is deployed or their mom is deployed or
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somebody just moved away I just got new friends but I don't want to forget the old ones.
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Moving all around it it makes you adapt to different ways and meet new
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people. So, it's really broadened my sense of like - like relationships of
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how to make new friends each time I move different places.
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Being a public school kid you don't have to move all the time you leave your best friends but
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if your a DoDEA school kid and you have military parents you're going to have to move all the time.
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And my family's very spread out, too. So on my
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mom's side both of her sisters are in the military also and then on my dad's
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side my two uncles did so we're pretty spread out so we're used to going around and everything
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You just got to learn that you won't be with your friends all
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the time and you always have plane tickets to go always buy one of those
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but you learn to make new friends as you move on.
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You kind of have to like learn to like fight for yourself a little bit and you have to be social so you're not the
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one awkward kid sitting at the back of the room everybody else is like talking.
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It takes a lot of patience and it takes a lot of determination did not just give.
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But once you put yourself out there it's a lot more to do and then of course
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with people being new you have to be willing to get the one and know other people and want to communicate.
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You have to learn how to rely on yourself and you
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have to be able to process the world without others guiding you.
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Since I've moved here I've been a lot more culturally awakened.
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So I'll tell my friends back in the States
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"Oh, I'm going to Venice for the weekend." They say, "You can do that?"
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I've gotten to see other parts of the world and how other cultures interact in everything.
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I get to try a whole bunch of different food from different places - stuff like that from being
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a military child having to move all the time.
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I remember basketball trips we'd see like refugees walking or just a lot of different things like
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going on and so it just opened my eyes there's like more going on in the world
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than just the United States.
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I think that's a huge opportunity to travel around to
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see different cultures and experience different things around the world.
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I feel like I've been introduced to multiple things and then because of that I'm able to decide what it is I want.
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I think there's a lot more like unity and a sense
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of community because like me I live on base and so I'm just around like
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everybody all the time and so I really get to know the people that are around
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and I just see everybody everyday, so just kind of there's more connection there.
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So, I want to be a friend to people that have to go through that because I went
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through it myself and I don't want anybody else to have to like face that alone.
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The one thing I've really noticed, comparing here to a stateside school, is
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there a lot more welcoming; we're all in the same situation we're all
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military kids, we're all moving every three years, sometimes four five six, but
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it's it's just we're all in the same situation we understand each other's
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problems a lot more.
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There's a lot of overcoming that happens when you're a military brat.