London 1850 - Arriving In Paradise - Sost - 2019 Term 2

For the past few weeks in Social Studies, we've been learning about pull and push factors. A pull factor is something that pulls you towards a place. Whether it's because they have nice weather or a less crowded town, it interests you so you move there. A push factor is something that pushes away from your place. Maybe they have bad weather or a crowded town or it's polluted or not enough jobs and schooling. You decide to leave because you can't deal with it anymore and it pushes you away.

Because we're learning about that, we were given a task to imagine living in the 1850s in London- and moving to New Zealand. Here's my first draft, I'll post this and then complete my final draft...

Arriving in Paradise

My name is Elizabeth Williams, and at this time- I hate living in London. It's so overcrowded and dirty. People toss their urine and feces and dirty bathwater out the window into the street. I refuse to walk on the sidewalk nowadays. Just the thought of someone throwing something out the window and it landing on me is just... disgusting. I have a job, but the money I earn is barely enough. I can only just pay rent every month so my little sister Anna and I can keep living here. I've taken the responsibility of caring for my sister since both of my parents passed away three years ago. Okay, I think I've told you enough about me. Let's get into the story.

I sat in my chair glueing sheets of paper together when Anna burst through the door. "Liz, Liz!" She shouted. I smiled at her small figure jumping up and down.

"What is it, Anna?" I giggled.

"Look! Look what I've got!" She cheered, waving a sheet of paper around as she darted towards me. She handed it to me.

In bold letters, it wrote, 'A CHANCE TO MOVE TO NEW ZEALAND, TAKE IT WHILE YOU STILL CAN' and in smaller letters, there was more information regarding the topic.

My jaw dropped. "Really? Is this..."

"Yes! If we go to New..."

"Zealand-"

"Yeah, there. If we leave this dirty old place and go to New Zealand- our lives will change forever," she said ecstatically. Her eyes were filled with joy.

I sat there, thinking for a minute. "Oh, what the heck! What's there to think about? Let's leave London!" I yelled.

She cheered jumping into my arms. We celebrated for a while and packed what little belongings we had.

"The poster said the first ship leaves tonight at seven o'clock," she said.
"Well, it's five thirty, so if we leave in another half hour, we'll have plenty of time to get to the ship and board," I explained.

We made sure we had what we needed and sat around for another twenty minutes. I also made sure I had more than enough money which was almost all we had.

When it was time to leave we began walking towards the railway tracks. Across the railway tracks is the border. The border between the 'rich' and the 'poor'. We crossed it and walking towards the bay where the ships arrive and leave. Our town is quite small so even if the did have the luxury of having a horse or carriage I don't see the point considering everything is in walking distance.

Once ships were in view… so were the people. An estimated 600 people were standing in three long lines.

“Oh, no...” Anna cringed. We looked at each other with dreadful faces. ”What are we going to do now?” She asked.

“Wait in line, I guess,” I sighed. We joined what looked like the shortest line and waited for the next two hours. Not very fun may I say. A lot of people were getting impatient, pushing, shoving and shouting.

Finally- we got to the front of the line and saw a man standing beside the steps up to the ship with a HUGE bag of money. No- gigantic. He looked at both of us and sighed. He looked extremely tired. His eyes had visibly dark bags and they were droopy.

“Are you travelling cabin or steerage? Steerage will be 15£ a passenger, and cabin will be 70£,” he murmured.

“Steerage. Wait did you say 15£? That’s 30£ for both of us to board. A lot of money,” I gulped. He looked blankly at me and I handed over the money. 5£ left now, not much left for anything else.

..................

Okay, so I had to post what I had written so far. I've written a lot more but I didn't have time to write it out on my blog. So for my final draft, I'll put the rest on there along with the improvements.