Arii Meuel
Pamela Smith
English Composition
October 12, 2010
The Departure

It was the final game for the Polynesia championship. I was fifteen years old, around five hundred people were there to cheer both team. The atmosphere was very stressful and also exciting. We won the game. This was my first champion title in basketball, but it was not the only crazy thing that happened to me this night. In fact, at the end of the game a man called Georgy Adams came to me and said: ‘’Hey little boy, do you want to play basketball in France?” At this time, I was very excited and I said: “Yes of course.”And I thank immediately: “I leave Tahiti”. I went to tell my father about what just happened. He asked me if I was sure about my decision. I said yes, I am sure. He said ok let’s do it, but we have to convince your mother to let you go to France. I knew that would be a tough thing to do, but I was very enthusiastic. My mother said no the first time but she saw that I really wanted to play basketball in France, so she gave up. The hardest thing to do was done. Now I had to tell all of my friends and also my girlfriend that I will not be in Tahiti the next year. It was very difficult and sad. My girlfriend cried for a whole week and she was mad at me because I did not ask for her. But I told her that it was my decision. We were very young and we had the time. My future is very important to me and I can see for my private life after. The day before my departure, my family made a big party. There were fifty people there. All of my friends and my whole family were there for me. I remember that we started the party at noon by a huge lunch. My grandmother and my mother cooked some Tahitian food. They started to cook the day before to have enough food for everybody. We started to eat at 2pm because we had to wait until everybody came. In our culture people are always late. We eat and party until 3 o’clock in the morning, then people started to leave, and