8th grade: family you love, friends you choose to love

[thateggroll]

8th grade stared and I switched on the secound day of school into 8D. At first I stayed by my old friends from the year before hand (Dikla, Hadar, Yael, Joy and Miriam) As I started hanging out with them more I ended up being aroung Daniella and Frida. I was still hesitent about them, but I was at the same time excited about having english speaking friends (till then I never had any english speaking friends so I talked hebrew at school and english was just used at home) in fact I remember beeing really pissed off at Danniella in the beging for insisting on talking to me in hebrew. but truthfully one of my most important relationships that year started at a shabbat ulpana when I got to meet Daniella more (we had a night long talk about ourselves) from that moment I was officially part of the "group" and I was initeated into the "agency" (an imaginary game that we had in which we were secret spies in the school). As the year passed by I became extreamy close to everyone in the group. by the end of the year I had truthfull come to the conclustion that I had finally found ppl who liked me for who I was and not for what they wanted me to be, I felt (and still feel to everyone except for miriam)that those ppl were close to me like family. In fact I remember walking with frida, danialle yael and joy to the lunch room and imagining with them about still meeting eatch other in out thirties for lunch or something and bringing the kids along ;)
The only thing troubling me at the end of 8th grade was that I was sopposed to go with me parents to NY on subbatical the folowing year (with out my brother and sister, who is my best friend). I was inraged about leaving my friends in israel and going somewhere new and kept beging my parents to let me stay in Israel.
A month after school was over I was boarding a plane to new york hart broken about the ppl I was leaving behind and scared about the coming year.