By Alvaro Magdaleno
I moved to Oakland five months ago. I came from a place called Watsonville, which is 20 to 30 minutes away from Santa Cruz. These two places are only one hour away but they seem to be two different worlds.
For starters Watsonville is much smaller than Oakland; you could consider it a town. Over here there is a greater use of public transportation. The population of Watsonville is mostly Latino while Oakland has a lot of diverse cultures. There is not much crime over there so coming here it seems like everything seems to be locked up. Over there you can walk after dark and not be worried about something happening to you.
The schools are different as well over here I have class every day while in my old school we had block schedule. Block schedule is better because you don’t have every class meaning you would not get as stressed when you have a lot of homework. In this school the standards are very low. Students just walk out of class or get into class late and the teachers do not seem to care. If this happened at my old school they would have gotten an after school detention. Over here the school offers more foreign languages than just Spanish like in my old school.
Moving is not the most fun thing in the world. If I had not moved I wouldn’t have experienced living in a city. Also I would have not known that youth radio existed. So if you move it might be different but there will be more opportunities and with time you will make it your new home
This commentary originally aired on Youth Radio’s Core Show.