Narrative Draft.

I learned to read fairly early. At age 4, I was reading Portuguese riddles from these kid-friendly books my father would bring home from our local Portuguese club chapter. Technically, English was my second language, except you really don't know it when I speak. I wanted to learn to read early, because of sheer boredom. My brothers are older, and although my mothers rule was 'only speak Portuguese in the house', they would talk to me in English behind her back just to annoy me. I had no idea what they were saying. So learning to read kept me busy, and in turn made me love reading and writing. My mom tried her best to keep her rule enforced so we would never lose our native language, but she gave up after I entered Kindergarten at age 5. Halfway through the semester, I was speaking English to everyone, and was learning to read the language as well.

Amelia Bedelia, The Babysitters Club, Pippi Longstocking, etc etc... I read just about everything I could get my hands on, and loved reading out lout to my mom. I can remember that I spent a lot of time poring over children's encyclopedia's when I had no more books in the house to read. I found that writing script was fun, and I would write stories after story of made up animals. I played 'school' with friends, using a chalkboard and stuffed animals as our 'class'. We would write notes to each other in class, and my mother would write notes for me to put in my bookbag, my lunchbox, etc. I never touched a typewriter or anything that comes close to technology.

That changed when I was 12 years old. We finally got a computer, and with it came The Internet. Everything changed at that point. I signed on for the first time on AIM, and suddenly communicating with friends was so different. But I still stayed away from the computer as much as possible - I always found myself breaking something, or freezing the computer, etc. It seemed that me and technology didn't mix. I only used it for AIM and after I realized it took me about 10 minutes to write one sentence, I put on the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing software that came with my computer and learned to type like a pro.

At age 14, I had my first computer class as a high school freshman. That changed everything. We learned how to use the computer for class assignments. That meant typing all our work on Word documents and using the search engines for research. Suddenly, I found myself using the computer for everything.

Google is now my favorite thing on the net. If it weren't for that, I'd be utterly lost. I use the internet for everything, but still am not good at using it. I do have a myspace, courtesy of a friend. Though now I am pretty good at editing it, although it took a few years.. I use the internet mostly to keep in touch with far away friends. It's made it possible for us to remain close , despite them leaving the state. We have our own message board, so I have discovered I can handle VBulletin.