Fox

So, this was assigned as my first ever high school paper. It's pretty short, and somewhat dull, but I hope I get a good grade. Tell me what you think.


Theres no key for a closed mind
“Plop, Plop, Plop”

My steps echoed dully in the bare asphalt alley. I was surrounded on every side by lightless neon signs, all written in an alien language. I was a child of suburbia, a pink cheeked kid that danced on chalk stained sidewalks. In fact, I had lived my whole 8 years of life in a plush, green utopia filled with the rambling of happy people and pets. What, then, was I doing in this urban wasteland? What was this concrete jungle?

I was finishing second grade when my parents told me. As I happily shoved my last report card in the faces of as many people as possible, my parents told me we were moving. Not moving down the street or to the next town over, but to the other side of the world. We were moving to South Korea, a country I had never, in my short life, ever spared a single thought for. My proud smile slid off my face like mud, slung at glass.

At the time, this seemed like a terrible joke. Why would we move from our cozy suburban home to some foreign city on the other side of the globe? Reality, however, was swiftly delivered in a package metallic and harsh.

When I first saw the airplane, I was in utter shock. This was no joke. An unquestionably real airplane was waiting to carry me across the impossibly large ocean to a new home. If I wasn’t prepared, it was too late.

The plane flight was ridiculously long (18 hours) and cramped with Japanese business men, but otherwise uneventful. Our arrival in Pusan, South Korea, however, was another story. One step out of the airport, and my nose was assaulted by a cacophony of odors, none of which I could name. Everything I could see and hear was foreign. The new culture literally pummeled my senses into submission, and I had only just arrived.

When the novelty finally wore off, I was confined to a barren, box of an apartment, a comatose lump of flesh. I grew restless with nothing to stimulate me, and decided, of my own accord, that I might as well satiate my boredom by exploring the surrounding streets.

There was a noticeable difference in the city right away. In contrast to my previous experience, the streets were now illuminated by bright, neon signs and orange tinged lamps. Jovial families were crowded everywhere, and their care free laughter filled the place with warmth so vivid, it was almost palpable. Every other step, an elderly woman would stop me just to give me a motherly greeting, or some unintelligible praise. New people and places presented themselves everywhere I went.

Suddenly, the dusty roads seemed much more inviting. It was then that I realized, the streets hadn’t changed, and neither had the people. It was only my outlook that had changed, and that had made the biggest difference. When I finally approached this new situation with an open mind, it had completely changed the way I saw everything. If only I had been this open from the beginning, I could’ve discovered this warm, intriguing world much sooner. This is when I truly learned the value of an open, unbiased mind, because good things are everywhere, if you’ll only let them in.