I stood in front of the red brick building, my heart thudding like a drum in my chest. It was my first day at a new school in a new country. Everything around me felt strange—bigger, louder, faster. The playground buzzed with kids talking and running, their voices a jumble of English words I could barely understand. Back in my home country, I knew how everything worked. Here, I felt like a little bird tossed into the wind.

“Hi! Are you new?”

I looked up and saw a girl about my age with curly brown hair tied into two pigtails. She had a gap in her front teeth and freckles scattered across her nose. She wore a bright pink jacket that looked too warm for the crisp morning air.