Community engagement is one of the primary course components of my Literature & Civilizations II class. In order to accomplish this and thus gain significant insight into our local surroundings, we each were paired with an international student studying in TCU's Intensive English Program. They would be our Conversation Partners for the semester.
About a month or so into class, I was informed that my Conversation Partner would be Vanessa Simon. She was a native citizen of Haiti. A couple of weeks before Spring Break, I reached out and contacted Vanessa to set up our first meeting. We ended up meeting that Friday in Rees-Jones Hall. I was pretty nervous before our conversation. It is always a little nerve-racking meeting new people but even more so meeting someone with such a different background than yourself. As our conversation began, I could tell Vanessa was just as, if not more, nervous than I was. I hadn't even thought about how weird this must have been for her. She had all of the same feelings that I did, plus she was in a totally different country! To ease the tension, I cracked a joke about how awkward this was, which resulted in a chuckle from Vanessa. I believe the fact that we were both anxious proved to each of us that we actually weren't that different from each other. This wasn't going to be as bad as we first envisioned, and it turned out to be a great conversation.
Just as anyone else would when meeting new people, we got to know each other. As I already mentioned, Vanessa was born in Haiti. At 27, she is the eldest of three children with a younger brother and sister. It actually turns out that Vanessa's sister was Conversation Partners with one of my good friends last semester. Vanessa's native language is Creole, but she also learned French in high school. She informed me that it was necessary to be able to speak both because they are each an official language of Haiti. Upon graduation from high school, Vanessa decided that she wanted to become a judge. Apparently though, most of the successful judges in Haiti can speak English, so she set out to learn. Because of the lack of quality English-teaching schools in Haiti, Vanessa's parents shipped her off to America.
Her first destination point was Maine. Unfortunately for Vanessa, but fortunate for our newfound friendship, she hated it. She was miserable during her stay because of three reasons. First off, she was extremely homesick. Second, the weather was awful. Haiti is known for being hot all of the time, so a place that was always cold and wet wasn't a good fit. Lastly, English is known as being one of the hardest languages to learn. So if one already doesn't like where they are, struggling in school can't help.
Luckily, Vanessa has an uncle that lives in Fort Worth. He informed her parents of TCU's IEP program and thought that it would be a great fit for her. So after just one year in Maine, she transferred to TCU. An added bonus, both of her siblings came along also. Vanessa seems to be liking it here, and she is on track to graduate this May.
I truly enjoyed getting to know Vanessa. And although we only had enough time to just get acquainted, I look forward to our next meeting when we can discuss other topics.
No comments:
Post a Comment