Sunday, June 13, 2010

Chapter 3: Life as a Nomad - Living with different relatives

I took the common entrance exam (we have to take that in order to get into the equivalent of the 7th grade in the U.S), and got into a military school. Benjamin went to boarding school at a different state. Since my mother traveled for months at a time, she had us stay with one of her step sisters (my aunt) who was quite the "wicked step-mother". I went to day school so I got to experience most of her wicked ways; lucky Ben, lol.
The school year went by pretty fast, I barely remember living with this aunt of mine. She had a daughter in my same grade (she went to a boarding school that I would later attend) and I was literally "Cinderella". I got dished all the chores, it was hard to believe that I was only 9 at the time. I got skipped several grades because I was smart :-) They were catholic so I went to mass with them and prayed at night with them. I learned how to say my "hail mary's". I detested living there and I was glad when my mother came back and put me in boarding school for my 8th grade year.
We then got to live with my mother's blood sister. Side note; my grandfather had many wives (about 20 or so); that's why we had so many aunts. Ben stayed at his school and I got transferred to a government owned private school. My brother and I went to school in different states from this current aunt (Let's call her Aunt Mary) and it was awesome!!! Aunt Mary was Jehovah's Witness so we attended her church with her
I was free to do as I wished so I slacked off a lot on my grades and just played like kids my age would; remember, I was only 10. I attended this school from the U.S equivalent of 8th-11th grade. I slacked off so much that I actually got held back when I was supposed to move on to the 11th grade. So in actuality, I attended the 10th grade twice. It seemed like my mother was gone for years. Aunt Mary treated us a lot better; and during summers we got to go stay with Aunt Cathy. She was so nice; treated us and her kids like gold. We went to resorts, played in the streams...it was so much fun. They were also catholic, so we went to mass with them. I looked forward to visiting every year! There were plenty of Aunts in our lives who were put in charge of looking after us. My mother sent money and clothes for us, but of course we never saw any of the money!
Finally, during my 4th year of boarding school, my mother returned to do some mothering...and I guess start paper work to get us moved to the States. Guess she got tired of having other people mother us? Not sure but she definitely didn't like the fact that my grades slipped so of course the beatings started again. We stayed in an estate where a friend of hers also lived; we call her aunt Patty. It was kind of nice having my mother back and having all the fun "American" clothes. We viewed the U.S back home as a place where everything was nice and everybody was upper class...I guess we were just naive. My mother started building a house...I suppose we had been renting all this time. We left for the U.S in 1997 (the house was half-way done) and it was on to a new adventure...It seems like we always kept moving! But I was excited to come live in the United States :-)