An year of humiliation and lessons

I can feel my heart beating. Fast. Very Fast. My legs shake, and my throat is dry. I want to say something, but I cant. And the tears sting my eyes. Why do I feel so? My peers from my sixth grade class are picking on me yet again. They had found me, a new girl to this class, to the school, to the country, rather a easy target. It was surprising how cruel they could really be. My anguish seemed like their happiness. My pain their joy. They seem to find lots of occasions to tell me I was different, and wasn't welcome.
On friendship day that year a girl bought cards for everyone in the class. Except for me. As she passed the cards to everyone, it was first time the girl, and others in the class realized that I actually existed. And then started series of nasty tricks, comments. They made fun of my accent, my clothing, anything that they found as being different. One very religious girl in the class wanted to convert me to a her religion. She told me I would go to hell because I was a Hindu. She told me I would be saved if I become Catholic. I was rather shocked, I had never heard expressions such as "go to hell". When I refused to do so, she accused me of being the servant of the devil. Again I, who was ignorant in such words up till then, was not only taken aback but dismayed by their accusation.
The boys in the class had the tendency of asking questions that they knew I would be offended by. They asked me whether everyone in my country smells bad, whether they pick garbage from the streets and eat and whether they get dots drilled in their heads. To ignore the taunting and the prospect of eating alone in the cafeteria, I started going to the library and hiding behind stacks of books, and eating lunch discreetly, hoping the librarian wouldn't catch me. The library became my haven for that hour, and my love for books grew. I decided I would spend the rest if the lunches this way, however the librarian caught me one day and told me to start mingling with the rest of the class.
So I started "hanging out" with the "cool" kids in the class. To be liked by them, I started acting like them. I started making fun of others just like they had done to me. I thought this would make me happy, but I was wrong. Totally wrong. On one occasion as me and my "cool" friends sat together outside during the lunch time, a woman passed by. She was maybe in her late thirties, with a huge smile, that seemed to lit up her face yet give a comical impression at the same time. As she approached the other girls started laughing. She came up to me, and gave me a compliment about my hair. Instead of thanking her, I laughed along with the other "cool" kids. The woman's face changed instantly as she saw me laughing, and I knew I had hurt her feelings. Later that day as I sat in my history class, rather then listening to the teacher talk about the civil war all I could think of was, what I had done. I came to realize that what I was doing was wrong and against what I stood for, and so I decided to go back being the real me. I stopped following them and trying to be like them. Every time I felt that what they were doing was wrong I would stand up to them. This made them turn against me even more, but now I was no longer frightened my their teasing and taunting. They themselves had taught me a new defence.
After that school year I moved to another town and then to another, here my differences and my ideas were accepted. I was welcomed and I made new friends. Yet those memories in my first year in the new country taught me valuable lessons that I never forgot and never will. I learned that I needn't become like someone to be accepted, that I stand up for what I believe in and accept others as they are.