buckled up

Lets review, all my life my family and I have traveled the world, our goal being to visit each country at least once. As we traveled we blogged and vlogged and snapped, and tweeted and whatever else you could do over social media. That being said our life was constantly an adventure, ever since I can remember I was meeting new people and learning bits of their language and culture. I have tried a countless number of different foods, styles, flavors, you name it I’ve probably had it. However this meant that I was never in the same place for more than a month, I’m home-schooled, or I guess more like travel-schooled, and my best friend is my twin brother Jax. Everywhere we go we do something different. Our latest quests were cliff jumping in Greece and snorkeling in Australia. Unfortunately those may be our last adventures for a while. 

My grandparents semi-approved of this way of living because they realize how much positive impact traveling can have, and my parents didn’t plan on stopping anytime soon, that was until we got a call from my Gram saying “John . . . stroke . . . hospital . . .” at least that's the part we could make out. We didn’t have very good service therefore making it seem very cryptic. However it was enough to get us all on a plane heading back to the states. John is my grandfather, Pops if you will. We make it a point to visit him and Gram at least once a year as a break and a time to share our adventures. They have been to a few places with us like Paris and Stonehenge, so they were able to cross it off their bucket list, but the older they got the less they wanted to travel and the more they wanted to venture around the little California town they lived in.

These are my dad's parents, we also visit my moms parents every year to do the same, however unlike Gram and Pops, Gran and Paps like to go on cruises during their retirement, recently they went on one to Alaska that was like a week long. 

Anyway, by the time we had gotten to the hospital where they brought Pops the doctors were done running the tests, about to share the results with Gram. Turns out he just fainted from dehydration because he and Gram were walking on the beach all afternoon and they forgot about water. Weird how you have to drink it to live right. Well after they filled him back up on fluids and made sure Gram had enough to drink as well, Pops was able to be sent home. As we drove back to their cute little place in Capitola the family was discussing the plans for the near future. 

My parents ended up deciding that we will be staying in Capitola for at least the next six months, they figured that it would be good to keep an eye on my grandparents for a bit and settle down for a little while planning our next journey. 

I could see where they were coming from, but Jax and I have never had to go to physical school before and we were curious to say the least. Through a little research we figured out that, one, the year was almost over, they had nine weeks left, and two that we would be joining them as high school sophomores. 

Flash forward 2 days and there we were, Jax and I standing in the cafeteria of our new school. The day before when we were talking with our parents they said that many of our classes will be preparing for their end of the year test, but we shouldn’t worry, and honestly that worried me a little. However, I knew that Jax would be there, we were given the same schedule to try and make this transition as smooth as possible. Our parents also said that we are only going for the last few weeks to get us used to public schooling, they wanted us to think of it as a new adventure. So an adventure it should be.

The front desk lady had handed us our schedules that morning and then we were off to fourth period, Pre-Calc. When we got there the teacher, Mrs. Ressler, made us introduce ourselves, which seemed to be a theme that day as we did it in the other three classes too. When we sat down and she started teaching I noticed another common occurrence from that day, mom was right, the reviews we were doing weren’t too bad and for the most part I understood what was happening. 

After the first week went by Jax and I were fitting in really well. We had found a group of friends that we shared classes with each of them, and they were kind enough to let us into their squad. And despite all of the classes that I had, the thing that I learned from that past week was that Jax and I are old enough to drive, since we already turned sixteen. After thinking about it I realized that it's lowkey scary, like you are in charge of this multi-thousand pound machine that has the capabilities of killing people. But, I wanted to learn so I made it my goal to start with the start of spring, my favorite season. That gave me 2 weeks to pull myself together.

Now here we are, my echo dot blasting One Direction in an attempt to wake me from my slumber. I realize that today is the day, the first day of spring, the day I promised myself that I would learn to drive. So I got up and got ready, as I headed downstairs I’m greeted with my whole family gathered and eating breakfast. Turns out I wasn’t awake as early as I thought. After drawing out the time it took to eat my daily bowl of cereal my dad got me behind the wheel. But as I was thinking last night, it should be just like Mario Kart right? No I was terribly mistaking this driving thing is more stressful than I originally thought. As I pull out of the driveway and down the street there is another car pulling up to the intersection, I turn to my dad “Dad, dad, dad what do I dooooo there is another car.” And this man replies “What do you mean, of course there is another car on the road, so now you stop at the stop sign and since you got here first you go.” Hesitantly I pressed the gas and we continued driving at the comfortable speed of 10 miles an hour. 

After circling the block a few times we come to the exist of the neighborhood and my dad had enough of me driving slower than the cyclists that passed us a few moments ago. He continues to tell me to go faster and once I reach 30 I refuse, until he tells me again to speed up to the speed limit, 40, I do, but I don’t like it. As we head down the street, windows up, music silenced I come to the odd conclusion that you only drive with one foot, and you could basically have a whole leg amputated while still being able to drive, wild. Simply cruising down the street had me freaked out a little. There were people around me and I was driving this thing that could cause serious damage to someone if I went too fast, or too slow, or too much to the right or the left and it was seriously spiking my anxiety that I didn’t have before. After a few more debates about when I should turn, how fast I need to go and the scary encounter that is switching lanes, we finally make it back to the driveway where I have another encounter that is parking. I was unsure of when to start turning into the driveway, do I press the gas? Do I let the car slowly pull up? Must it be straight if it's the only car that will be in the driveway? All questions I was spitting out to dad while very hesitantly parking the car. 

Finally my dad and I made it back into the house, surprisingly neither of us are injured and neither are any of the people that I passed in the past hour, so I take it as a win. A couple minutes after we got back I was trying to relax, but mom came up asking to share my experience. So with all of us sitting in the living room I started sharing all my thoughts, comments, concerns and crises. In conclusion I say “With all the adventures that I completed before, swimming with sharks, cliff diving, scuba diving, zip-lining, parasailing, this is by far the most stressful.” 

Jax on the other hand loves driving, a couple weeks ago when we first found out that we were old enough to drive Jax immediately asked dad to start teaching him. Unlike me, he picked up on it right away, likes it, isn’t scared and is confident enough to listen to music AND drive at the same time. I think that is wack and I’m going to let him drive if we happen to start driving to school.

Okay, so another week passed and driving isn’t as bad as I thought it was the first time I drove. In fact I think I'm getting pretty good at it now, I’m almost as confident as Jax. You know, able to drive with the radio on and not freaking out about the other cars who are also on the road. However, I still don’t like it when there are little children and other people on the sidewalks because how about if they like, decide to waltz in front of the car, then what? You hit them and it's your fault because you’re the driver.