My first day of school in Manthan started with my mom waking me up and telling me to go to the dining table to eat my breakfast. It was on the 15th of November. I still remember the date clearly in my mind because I remember the teacher leader telling my parents, "She will be starting school from the 15th of November". I knew that it was the day I started school in India, and I was really excited. New friends, new teachers, new faces, new halls, and all those other fresh thoughts filled my mind.

The night before, I stayed awake for a long time. I missed my old friends in the States, but I knew that I would make many new friends, but I still hoped I would not forget my old ones. I tossed and turned in my bed. After a few minutes, when my mother came to turn off the lights, I asked her what I should do if I made no friends in school. She said that we would talk about it the next day, and told me not to worry about anything. She left me with my thoughts, and there were an awful lot of them.

In the morning, when I had gotten ready with my uniform and school bag, I headed outside. I felt like I had mice in my stomach. My parents came down with me. One of our teachers had told us to drive me to school on the first day, and as we had not gotten a car yet, we got an Uber and drove to school. I tried to memorize everything on the way. I wanted to know the route. Soon, we reached school.

A teacher came and took my hand. She was my co-class teacher. She took me to my classroom and I saw a lot of kids looking at me. I went to the class teacher, and she talked to me about what we were learning, where I should sit, and what our timetable was. Soon, we had breakfast. I went to wash my hands and some other girls came with me and also talked to me freely. I felt really warm and talked to them too. We had breakfast, which was served on our tables, after which the classes started.

A memorable moment on the first day made the whole day seem like a joke. The smartest girl in the class, I don't remember her name, got up to do a Math problem. She used to take pride in her smartness and when the teacher left the class for any reason, to meet up with the teacher leader or another teacher, that girl would come up to the board and try to teach us the lesson. This one time, she screwed up. There was a problem that we all could solve easily, and she took a long time explaining it, but got the wrong answer! From that day, whenever the teacher asked the kind of question, everyone would look at her and start to giggle.

Eventually, I settled in my new school, and now I have many friends and know a lot of teachers.