On the first day of kindergarten, we practiced a tornado drill. The other kids in my class thought nothing of it, but I was terrified. I wasn’t just starting school, but I was in an entirely new country. My family had just moved from Canberra to Ohio. I didn’t really know what a tornado was, considering I was from a place that has pretty unremarkable weather. A few weeks later, there was a real tornado warning on TV. My mother freaked out and made my brother and I hide in the basement. We didn’t really know what we were doing. The tornado missed our county, and the storm passed. I was no longer afraid, I was excited. Continue reading