Queens is a long way from Carlsbad, 2,420 miles to be exact. Nine days spent in a car, passing through Mt. Rushmore, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas among many others. Luca Gomez spent his summer driving across the country from his former home in the city of Queens, NY, to coastal Carlsbad.

In his hometown, he enjoyed hanging out with friends and biking, although makes it clear that the city life he once enjoyed is gone. “You can find everything you need on one block in Queens, everything is so close together. Here, everything seems so spread out and open.”

Luca recently visited downtown San Diego and was unimpressed.

“The city here, it’s nothing, it felt dead,” he laughed.

“City people are mean, one look might be enough to start a fight,” he chuckled. As a city person since birth, Luca claimed, “I love the city so much, because I was born there, it’s what I know.”

He is, however, extremely appreciative of the welcoming atmosphere he has enjoyed since coming here, and is grateful for the welcoming teachers and students. “The teachers in Queens were there to get paid, that’s pretty much it.” In Carlsbad, he is impressed by the work ethic and pleasant attitudes Sage Creek teachers possess.

He said he did not have much of a choice when faced with the decision of which high school to attend, but says his family was attracted to the beautiful campus that Sage Creek boasts. On the East Coast, schools are “indoor,” containing classrooms inside a building rather than facing outwards, due to their more extreme climate.

So far, Luca likes his English and Bio-Med classes the most, and is potentially interested in a career in the medical field, but joked, “I’m only a freshman, so I don’t really know what I want to do yet.”

Luca plans on trying out for the basketball team, having already started the preseason workouts and practices. “The basketball is way more intense here than it was in Queens,” he said. He agreed with the fact that Sage Creek’s lack of football team puts more emphasis on basketball. The new athletic facilities athletes get to enjoy is a definite plus to participating in sports.

There’s no question that moving across the country a month before freshman year is not an easy task, but the transition from industrial to coastal living has been smooth for Luca Gomez.