A Memory From My Childhood #31DayMarch

I’m not going to go back into my wee childhood. I have to be honest and say I don’t have a lot of great memories from when I was a kid. Life was pretty messy for a long time. But I’ll share my memory on how I ended up spending a year in Spain for school my 9th grade year.

My biological father lived overseas in Saudi Arabia. No, he wasn’t a spy or anything exciting like that. He worked with highways…whatever that means. So, every summer, my brother and I would fly over there and spend a month with him. Usually within that month we’d “vacation” somewhere else. That summer we were headed to Kenya.

At the time, I had a stepmom and a stepbrother. My brother was two years older than me. I didn’t know much about their lives aside from the time we spent there in the summers. He was also terrible in his treatment of me. I typically hated my summers with my dad simply because of him and the jealousy my stepmom seemed to always have towards me. blah

Anywho…so I remember one night I was sleeping with my brothers wherever we were in Kenya and I remember my stepbrother talking about going to school in Spain. I completely remember my response. It was of totally shock and jealousy. How the heck was he going to school in Spain? Oh, and how could I get in on that action?

So, the next day I asked a bunch of questions. Apparently, when you’re an American living overseas with your family, the schools only go up to 9th grade (or at least they used to in Saudi). After that, you head off to boarding school.

I asked my dad and he was totally fine with it. lol Guess who wasn’t? My mom. I mean, I’d gone to visit my dad for the summer and now I wasn’t going home for an entire year! That meant we had to buy a lot of stuff. It was hard and exciting all at the same time. I felt bad for making this decision out of the blue (it’s still true for today), but I was also extremely excited.

Now, I had a really great experience over there. I had a wonderful friend who was my roommate pretty much the entire year and we had a fantastic room. She was bright and studious. I was the slacker who only wanted teenie bopper pictures splattered across the walls. We were able to go to bars and drink.We had curfews and tried to stick to them. “Rapido por favor” became one of my/our typical phrases to cabbies.

When she got married, I was her maid of honor and even sang an Air Supply song. I pray that she has destroyed any evidence of me singing in public! lol

Needless to say, that is one of my fondest memories…oh that, and my dad barfing out in the lake while we were taking a glass bottom boat tour. Cracked me up he got sea sick! =)

Do you have any fun childhood memories?