Lisa and Lena | The Move

Chapter 1

Chapter one:
Lena's POV
I took a deep breathe and stepped onto the plane that would take me from Stuttgart, Germany to Rockford, Illinois. A decision my parents made after my father got a job there. Me and my sister Lisa have always wanted to travel to America but we never wanted to move there. That meant leaving all of our friends, family and memories all the way across the world. Scary.
Me and my family have spent the past few months working on our english, and we know quite a bit so far, but me and Lisa are scared that it won't be enough when we start 8th grade in just a week. While we're still learning words they have known since kindergarten, they work on language and english much more difficult and we're expected to keep up. My parents learned a lot of English when they were younger, so the language issue was non-existent for them.
I sat on the plane next to my sister. She looked just as nervous as me. I took deep breaths and plugged in my earbuds, listening to the spotify playlist I made.
I ignored the flight attendant's annoying speech and bounced my leg up and down. I can't stand being still for even five minutes, so how am I supposed to endure an 8 hour flight? All I brought with me was my phone, earbuds, and a 'german to english' dictionary.
A few hours into the flight I began to get tired. I rested my head on Lisa's shoulder and drifted off into a warm sleep.
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"Look at their outfits.Ew!"
"They're so ugly!"
My sister and I walked down the school hallways with our eyes glued to the ground. They hated us. We'll never make any friends here. Tears blurred my vision. Lisa steered me into our first class, science. We sat down next to each other and waited for class to begin.
"Ahh we have our students from Germany. Why don't you introduce yourselves." Our teacher, Mr.Houston said enthusiastically.
We both hesitantly stood up.
"Um my name is Lena and my sister and I lived in Stuttgart, Germany and I do dance and football with my sister." I said doing my best to hide my german accent. The class burst into laughter. I furrowed my eyebrows in both confusion and wrathe.
One of the boys in the back pointed at me. "You two play football?! Thats the funniest thing I've ever heard." He said between laughs.
"Class! In germany, soccer is called football. Grow up!"
They all stopped and realized their stupidity.
Lisa looked at me unsure what to do. I shrugged, feeling bad that I wasnt able to help out my terrified sister.
"Lisa, you may share now." Mr.Houston said clearly ashamed of his cruel and immature middle school students.
"Im Lisa and Im 14 and I have a twin sister. Well obviously. She stifled a nervous laugh. And uh ya." She quickly sat back down, her cheeks a bright crimson red. I scanned the classroom waiting for the comments on her obvious german accent.
"Her voice!"
"You'd think she'd learn how to speak like an American before she came intruding into our country."
"Atleast the other one had the decency to learn"
Again, the tears came
back and I saw Lisa's face was covered in tears as well.

Suddenly, I was being shaken. I sleepily opened my eyes, unaware of my settings.
"Lena, are you alright?" My sister said, her hand still on my shoulder.
I realized I was still on the plane, and let out a sigh. It was only a dream. My eyes were still watery, and my body shook regardless of the warm temperature.
"Ya, I just had a bad dream. It was uh-it was with monsters." I muttered, not wanting to make Lisa any more worried about starting school.
"Alright, if you say so." She answered, before returning to her book.
***************

Just as the movie I was watching was beginning to finish, the flight attendant announced that our plane would be landing shortly. Again, the butterflies returned and I peered out the window. It was most definitely different from Germany. There were tall, glass buildings everywhere, and a lot of the smaller buildings were fullof color. The streets were filled with people, some with a hurried, and determined walk, others with a calm, slow walk. But the weird thing was, that there were no houses. Where do all these people live?
Lisa leaned over to take in the view as well.
"Mom said that in this city, people live in little rooms in all those buildings. But thats only in Chicago. Where we're living, theres only houses."she said, as if she was reading my mind.
"This place is so different" I said.
Our plane had just landed and I was a little glad that the airport looked no different than the one we were in to board this plane back in Germany.
We grabbed our bags and got off the plane. Lisa and I made our way to baggage claim and picked up our suitcases.
"How about we get some dinner."My mom said, cheerfully.
We found a small little restaurant, that had a lot of things we've never heard of. Me and my sister decided to share a salad. Atleast we had those back in Germany.
When the cashier heard our accents, she smiled widely. But when the worker next to her heard we had only ordered a salad to share, she scanned our bodies and made a sour face.
Lisa and I had kind of expected that kind of reaction from our bodies, as we had heard that Americans ate a lot of really bad food, and weren't the kind of thin us Germans were.

After we had finished our salad, our family left the airport and had a cab take us to a bus station. The cab driver was, once again, exhilerated that we had arrived from Germany. He told us some things about Americans. Including that everything was less expensive, which me and my sister were happy about, since we had to buy our own clothes.
***************
As we got off the bus, a car was there to take us to our house in Rockford. My father had said it was big compared to most houses. When we got there, the area behind our house was filled with cornfeilds, and a long, road had houses identical to ours lined up on either side. The house itself was made of brick and it was two stories. The driveway was short and on either side was perfectly cut grass and gorgeous orange flowers lined the house. A fountain stood near the door and the roof was built much differently than we were used to.
I followed behind my mother into the house. The staircase was huge and the walls were painted a deep beige. It was beautiful.
I ran up the stairs, racing my sister, to get a good room. They both had decent sizes, and had a walk-in closet and a bathroom connected. I chose the one with light pink walls, while Lisa chose the one with white walls. The beds were plain white and my room had a fuzzy white area rug that covored a section of the wood floors. Lisa's room had a light blue fuzzy area rug.
I was getting really tired, so I checked the time, it was 9:45, which meant although it was morning for everyone else here, We still needed a few days to adjust.
I grabbed my facewash, toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush and a towel from my bag. I did my daily night routine and then went back to my bag to grab my light pink romper pajamas. I then got my blanket from downstairs and returned to my room, scanning the room once again. I fell into a deep sleep, with lots on my mind.