The lunch room was set up horizontally with four long rows of tables. We weren't "cool" but we weren't the "losers" either, so we sat in a neutral area on the left by the serving line. Michelle was talking to Bridget and Klara while I tried to keep a conversation going with Kristen, who snapped her gum to the annoyance of the others.
"I want to study abroad in Spain," I quirked.
Michelle made a "pffting" sound which was occupied with a rolling of her eyes, so I stood my ground. Although I had no clear reasons for wanting to go to Spain, I knew that I wanted to travel after befriending a girl named Merisha. She was my inspiration.
I met Mersiha the year before after Michelle introduced us as people rushed past going to their first class. She was mistakenly introduced to me as "Mersika" and I was excited at the thought of meeting someone from another country. Granted I had known a couple of Indian-Americans and one Chinese-American, but I still hadn't met a real foreigner my age. She was intriguing to me in the extremely homogeneous school setting because she came from Serbia, spoke of cultural situations I pretended to understand, and she had a thick accent which was sometimes accompanied by foreign words.
Those few years we had together I spent a lot of time talking to Merisha, trying to figure out her life back home. She told stories of teachers publicly humiliating her and not being able to do math homework because their calculators didn't work. I started a habit of saying, "uh-huh" each time she spoke of some historical aspect of her country, to which I had no information about.
Although others weren't taken in by Merisha being different, I was. She didn't stand out because the others weren't attracted to those different than them. But I found how she handled our school interesting and I tried to understand how she did it with so much ease. Her English seemed perfect to me. She had no trouble with communication and her basic English skills were more refined than our own. During class she received higher grades than most and she was always chosen to write inspiration speeches for our class. There seemed to be nothing she couldn't do.
Only one mistake jumps out when I now look back with the perspective of being an international student. We had a religion class together our senior year with a former nun turned religion teacher. She stood tall with short, red hair and glasses so thick they looked like they were from the 1980s. Mersiha and I were sitting in the back row when she came to join us as we worked in groups on an assigned project. Merisha became confused over a word and turned to our teacher to ask, "What does 'Caucasian' mean?" All she received was a look that could hurt with scrunched up eyes that glared and a mouth that signaled disappointment. Mersiha turned to me confused and asked, "Doesn't she know English is not my first language?" High school wouldn't be the same without Merisha and I learned through her the good and the bad of being an international student.
Mersiha opened my eyes to the possibility of traveling out of the United States and over to the lands I had only read about to that point. The love of traveling was already instilled in me, as my mother once said, "I blame myself for how much you love to travel. I should've never taken you on all those trips while you were growing up." Suddenly Mersiha acted as a catalyst that sparked my desire to get out. I could be her: young and living in a new country, starting out fresh.
So there I was at lunch with Kristen snapping her gum, Michelle rolling her eyes at me, and me standing strong with my persistence that I would be traveling abroad.
"No matter where you are, you will always miss home," Merisha said with a sigh.
The summer before I was due to leave
"I want to study abroad in Spain," I quirked.
Michelle made a "pffting" sound which was occupied with a rolling of her eyes, so I stood my ground. Although I had no clear reasons for wanting to go to Spain, I knew that I wanted to travel after befriending a girl named Merisha. She was my inspiration.
I met Mersiha the year before after Michelle introduced us as people rushed past going to their first class. She was mistakenly introduced to me as "Mersika" and I was excited at the thought of meeting someone from another country. Granted I had known a couple of Indian-Americans and one Chinese-American, but I still hadn't met a real foreigner my age. She was intriguing to me in the extremely homogeneous school setting because she came from Serbia, spoke of cultural situations I pretended to understand, and she had a thick accent which was sometimes accompanied by foreign words.
Those few years we had together I spent a lot of time talking to Merisha, trying to figure out her life back home. She told stories of teachers publicly humiliating her and not being able to do math homework because their calculators didn't work. I started a habit of saying, "uh-huh" each time she spoke of some historical aspect of her country, to which I had no information about.
Although others weren't taken in by Merisha being different, I was. She didn't stand out because the others weren't attracted to those different than them. But I found how she handled our school interesting and I tried to understand how she did it with so much ease. Her English seemed perfect to me. She had no trouble with communication and her basic English skills were more refined than our own. During class she received higher grades than most and she was always chosen to write inspiration speeches for our class. There seemed to be nothing she couldn't do.
Only one mistake jumps out when I now look back with the perspective of being an international student. We had a religion class together our senior year with a former nun turned religion teacher. She stood tall with short, red hair and glasses so thick they looked like they were from the 1980s. Mersiha and I were sitting in the back row when she came to join us as we worked in groups on an assigned project. Merisha became confused over a word and turned to our teacher to ask, "What does 'Caucasian' mean?" All she received was a look that could hurt with scrunched up eyes that glared and a mouth that signaled disappointment. Mersiha turned to me confused and asked, "Doesn't she know English is not my first language?" High school wouldn't be the same without Merisha and I learned through her the good and the bad of being an international student.
Mersiha opened my eyes to the possibility of traveling out of the United States and over to the lands I had only read about to that point. The love of traveling was already instilled in me, as my mother once said, "I blame myself for how much you love to travel. I should've never taken you on all those trips while you were growing up." Suddenly Mersiha acted as a catalyst that sparked my desire to get out. I could be her: young and living in a new country, starting out fresh.
So there I was at lunch with Kristen snapping her gum, Michelle rolling her eyes at me, and me standing strong with my persistence that I would be traveling abroad.
"No matter where you are, you will always miss home," Merisha said with a sigh.
The summer before I was due to leave
