Moving across oceans is no easy feat, especially to an adolescent still finding her way in the world. North Atlanta senior Dimitra Sarri knows these realities all too well. Last year she moved from Greece, where she had lived her entire life, to Atlanta. Assimilating in America has been a daunting task.

Though she has been learning English since first grade, suddenly functioning in a world where it is the primary language spoken in all spheres of life was such a change from what Sarri has always known. And this is but a single aspect of the new place she has been forced to integrate into. When one takes into account the myriad of odd cultural quirks America and its schools have – the almost religious focus on football, strange views with buried religious undertones, and strict adherence to standardized testing – and attempts to look at it from an outsider’s perspective, it’s hard not to feel alienated by it all. This is how Dimitra experiences life here, every second of every day.

“I love Athens, and I love my school there, and all my friends,” she said. “It wasn’t my choice to come. But I’ve grown to like it here a little bit.”

However, after experiencing both places, she explains that she thinks the European way of living is better. People are not as restrained by what others think of them. There’s less labeling, even though America is a place heralded as the “Great Melting Pot,” where all cultures mix and supposedly become one.

She has a more iridescent outlook on the United States now that she’s here, but with all of the bright colors comes a slight gray tarnish. “I feel like my perspective of the whole ‘American dream’ thing is just that – a dream – now that I’ve experienced it. America is like any other nation,” she said. “It’s good in some ways and bad in others. For example, I really hate the standardized tests – they tried to do that to us in Greece, but we protested, even got on the news, and they dropped it. But I do like how I’ve met so many people from so many different backgrounds who I never would have known back in Greece.”

It seems there is some truth to the Melting Pot after all.

Often, she hears of what is happening back home, and it is agonizing for her to be so far away when these moments get particularly bad. “Right now, Greece is so messed up. And my mom’s there, my sister’s there, my family’s there. I know the struggle that they’re going through. When I was there during the summer, I saw all of them fighting so hard. There were many occasions where kids were passing out at school because their parents didn’t have money to feed them. I wish I could help them somehow. Then there’s the refugee crisis, which adds to everything,” she said.

Sarri doesn’t want to involve herself in politics, but even so, she has a decent grasp of them. What bothers her most is that while she’s here a world away her family members and other families – her fellow countrymen – all suffer.

Sarri can’t reach home while tied to school. She walks and breathes on a wholly different continent from the one she was raised on. A miles-deep sea separates her from her mother. It’s definitely hard to struggle with the knowledge of this, but all the same, she appreciates America, Georgia, Atlanta, and North Atlanta High for the very strange places they are, and despite her initial skepticism, is grateful to have been given the opportunity to open her world to a host of new experiences.