Journal #1

I used to be this crazy, loud, outgoing, "untamable" child. Often, my clothes were soiled with dirt and mud (mud pies, mud fruits, mud candy, anything made from mud was my very FAVORITE!) and my hair was never neat nor combed (not that my mother didn't try!).
I would come up with strange games to play with my friends; for example, we would all be babies inside our mother's belly and would somehow fall in fire.
In class, I was noisy and often disrupted the lesson. I could even say that I was rude sometimes, not to mention the fact that I loved to show off.
I was a devil with my little brother, who, ironically, was the perfect figure of an angel. I enjoyed dramatizing EVERYTHING, especially to inculpate my brother of something he did not do.
Anyways, I think you got the picture: a 10 year old girl with messy hair, dirt smears on her face, holes in her jeans and a rebellious look in her eyes.

One day, my parents took me aside, not to reprimand me as I thought they would, but to talk to me about "very important matter" on which they wanted  my advice and consent.
My father had been proposed to move to the United States for his work, so we needed to make a decision. Of course, I was all for it...I could already picture the envious faces my friends would make! But I had no idea what consequences were going to affect the little "devil" inside me forever.

So we left France and moved to the United States where I attended American school.
It was not only a culture shock, it was an EVERYTHING shock. The language, the way school was taught, people's attitudes toward each other, the respect between those people, the food, the houses, etc, etc. Every place I went, I felt alienated. Of course, people were very friendly, I was just feeling extremely aloof.
I fount myself being timid, afraid to speak or to make friends. At recess, I would sit in a corner and read my French book, the only thing that kept me from literally "disappearing of shyness".

As time went on, the barrier of language was soon overcome and I acquired more self confidence. I discovered that a quiet, observant and discrete person lay unconscious within me. I never regained the craziness that animated me in France... I don't know why. It just never came back. All I know is that the soft, calm girl remained.

Was the "looney" part of me a persona? Is this calm personality my true identity? Or did I unconsciously put on a persona after enduring the culture shock?
I don't think that I, or anybody, will ever know.