Changing Cultures.
- 21 oct 2015
- 3 Min. de lectura
Changing from one country to another is a hard thing to do, but having great friends to help you out throughout the process can make it easier. My name is Daniela Vargas, I am thirteen years old and when I was eight my family and I moved to the United States. The whole experience was life changing and it shaped me into the person I am today.
In 2010 my dad, Michel Vargas, got awarded a scholarship to study in the U.S and earn his PhD in Material Science and Engineering. He chose to study in Virginia Tech, a university located in the small town of Blacksburg in the state of Virginia. It was a big change for me moving from a big city like Quito to the small forested town of Blacksburg. On September 3, 2010 I met some very important people in my life, I met my best friends. This past September my friends and I have known each other for five years. My first weeks of school everyone was interested on me, to them I was the exotic girl that spoke Spanish and to me they were the blond, blue eyed people I had always heard about but never met. But there were two girls that instantly caught my eye, the only two girls that treated me normally and we have been friends since. They were the ones that helped me adjust to Blacksburg, the ones that helped me fit in.
This past summer my parents told me that we would be moving back to Ecuador, my dad had gotten an amazing opportunity to be a professor at the San Francisco University and he had accepted the job. That news hit me pretty hard, I didn’t want to leave or be the new girl again, I didn’t want people staring at me like I was a museum exhibit. But a decision had already been made, I was going back to Ecuador. My parents looked for a school to put me in and the found Colegio Britanico Internacional. The second I saw the school I fell in love with it. I felt at home for the few moments I was in it. I started school there on September 23, 2015. On my first day of school everyone wanted to know about my experience, how my English was, and just general information about myself. I felt overwhelmed, until I met some people that I felt like I knew but I didn’t. What seemed so familiar about them was their personality and I started to fit in. They have helped me adjust, teased me occasionally about my accent, and made me laugh like there was no tomorrow. I felt even more at home with them.
I have always valued friendship, due to me moving to another country I have lost many of them, making me see how important they are. I feel a certainty my friendships created at Colegio Britanico will last longer. Maybe I feel this way because of the lack of personal space my friends seem to have making it impossible for me not to imagine them close, or just the gut feeling I have never gotten before. But whichever one is right I just hope it happens. They have made changing to a different culture very easy, and I am very thankful for that. There are so many things I am getting used to, for example: the lack of personal space, the food, the way people interact with each other, the language, etc. They mostly enjoy teaching me about foods I have forgotten about and correcting my Spanish when needed. I simply enjoy their company, they will never know exactly how much I am thankful for them or how scared about losing them I am but they get the idea.
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