Tag Archives: cultural exchange

Sisters: Lucre and Florine’s Journey

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Florine and Lucre reflect on their relationship over the past 8 months.  Though both from NPH, they had never met before the plane ride from Miami to Seattle last September.  How do we move from strangers to sisters?  

“Hi! Are you Florine?”, asked Nelson. “Yes, it’s me”, I replied.

Magda was seated by the window, Lucre in the middle, and Nelson…you can imagine where he was sitting?  The four of us shared some cookies, and tried to know each other in the plane from Miami to Seattle.  Nelson was translating for the girls what I was saying in broken English.  Well, you know how communication is important, so we decided to do our first intercultural communication which was quite interesting and friendly.

Landed in Seattle, it took us more than ten minutes to find our suitcases. Thank goodness we were all together!  Were we lost?  Hmmmm…not really, we were just excited to visit and exploring this big airport.  Would you do that for a first time?  Maybe not, but we were just adventurous and curious.  After taking a couple laps at the airport and finding our suitcases, we were surprised to see how many people were waiting for us. Our host families and friends. We loved it, and we were happy.

One time at the beginning of the year, we were at Malia’s place for a get-together with some of the NPH volunteers, and Lucre was taking pictures of the whole group.  I wanted to delete the pictures that she took of me.  I did not know how to tell her in Spanish that I want to only delete mine, and she did not either understand in English what I was telling her. We both got angry because we had a misunderstanding in that conversation. She thought that I wanted the camera, but I did not need it, I just wanted to delete the pictures.  That was our first hard time.

Did we have a second one?  You know, we were all different from each other, so working as a team was kind of challenging.  But, we took time to get to know each other, we learned how to speak “Spanglish” because that helped us most of the time, and we even used sign language to communicate.  As time was passing, things got better.

Lucre and I are maybe not the best friends in the world, but we are really good, true friends and most importantly, sisters.  We now support each other every single day, we share stories, secrets…who does not share secret with a special friend?  Lucre says that I am humble, but I think that she is more humble than me.  She also thinks that I am bossy, and well, she is right and I am working on that.  I love her. And…she says that she loves me too.  Last Saturday, I forgot to take my passport with me to the ELS for my TOEFL test. Lucre took the bus and came all the way to downtown Seattle, and brought me the passport.  I was able to take it because she was there for me, I won’t never forget it.  Thank you mi Lucrecita!  Te  amo mucho!

At the end, we have struggled, we found difficulties, we were mad at each other sometimes, but we finally saw a sister in each other.  Now, we only speak English, but I do speak some Spanish words sometimes just to let her know that I can speak Spanish while she is speaking English.  “Hurry Florine, hurry!”  That is what she says when she comes over to the Fonsecas’s place, and she has to make sure that we do not miss the bus.  “I am almost done Lucre, give me five minutes and we won’t be late because we have class at 1:00”.  I should ask for ten or fifteen minutes instead of five. Why? Because I take more than five minutes to be ready, so I make her run every morning to the bus stop since she is staying with me, and if we miss the bus, we will be in trouble.

The End of Lucre and Florine’s story…just for now…

Arriving in Seattle! What a welcome!!
Our first retreat, getting to know each other.
At Malia’s…
Fun at the Sounders Game!
At an NPH USA Associate Board fundraiser.

“I would do it again in a heartbeat” ~ A Reflection on Hosting an NPH Student

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By Cheryl Goodwin

When we agreed to be a host family for one of the Leadership students this year, I knew that I would be glad I had done it. My family has been involved with NPH since 2007, when my oldest daughter worked at the regional office. She invited us to a Faces of Hope event that introduced us to NPH, its founder and the children who are part of a large, loving family.  Shortly after that we sponsored our first godchild from Guatemala, and then a second one.

I have been a Table Captain at numerous events, volunteered in the office, and am currently serving on the Regional Board.  This past summer, I visited the home in Guatemala and was able to meet my godchildren and see first-hand that everything that I had heard about NPH was true. I remember clearly driving through the entrance of the grounds and being brought to tears by the beauty of it all, especially in contrast to the poverty we had passed through on the trip from the airport.

During this trip I was able to visit with several of the young men and women who had been through the Leadership program in the past few years.  It was good to see them living out what the program was aiming for – providing leadership and support to their sisters and brothers at NPH. I was also introduced to Luisa, who was planning to come as one of this year’s students.

Paul and I have always opened our home to others.  Our children’s friends were (are) always welcome, extended family members have lived with us for several months, holiday gatherings are frequently at our house, and we have had weekly meals with a  large group of friends for nearly twenty years.  However, in recent years, I kept feeling the call to show “hospitality to strangers.”  We had been asked to consider hosting a student the prior year, but for several reasons had decided it wasn’t the right time.  The idea had stayed in my mind, however, and my visit to the home in Guatemala made everything so much more real than it had been before.  So, when Kara King asked us to consider it again this year we said yes.

To be honest, even after saying yes, I was nervous and uncertain about whether or not it was a good idea. Our student, Magda, is from Honduras and she spoke very little English.  Since neither my husband, my mother, nor I speak Spanish, I was worried about how we were going to communicate.  The first couple weeks were a bit of a challenge, communication-wise.  The translation programs on our cell phones were a life-saver, allowing us to at least get the basics of what we were trying to say across. However, we were able to laugh as we fumbled our way through unfamiliar words and as Magda’s English skills increased and we learned a little Spanish, communication became easier.  We now have long, detailed conversations with only the occasional look-up of a particularly difficult word.

I had also worried that we wouldn’t be exciting enough for her – we don’t have kids at home, we aren’t soccer players, and are pretty busy with work commitments.  But we can, and did, provide an opportunity for her to be part of our family, with all of our quirks and goodness. Our friends and church family have loved getting the chance to get to know her.  I was rather surprised at how quickly Magda began to feel like another daughter to us.

As I mentioned earlier, I knew that I would be glad that we had agreed to be a host family and that it was the right thing to do.  What I hadn’t counted on, however, was the joy I would experience in the midst of it.  I love introducing her to our family’s traditions, taking her to our favorite restaurants, participating in holiday activities, spending the evening watching a movie at home, and even helping her with her homework.  I am humbled by the fact that she has been willing to share her life story with us and that she trusts us to love and care for her.  I am blessed by her generosity and kindness towards her brothers and sisters at the ranch. I am impressed with her hard work to learn a new language and a new culture. I know she will take a piece of my heart with her when she returns to Honduras at the end of June, but am comforted by the knowledge that I now have another reason to visit the NPH ranch there.

An added benefit of being a host family is the opportunity to get to know the other five students and their host families. Each of them, Luisa, Samy, Lucre, Florine, and Nelson, are wonderful individuals who challenge and bless me.  As I near the end of this year, I am saddened by the fact that I will miss them all and so very encouraged by the good work that I know they will all do in the future.

I am grateful that I have been able to play a small part in their lives. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Intercambio Cultural – Cultural Exchange in Seattle

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By: Samuel, NPH Mexico

Láizì Seattle de wènhòu, Saludos desde Seattle.  Una palabra dificil de pronunciar para mi, pero es una de las cosas que he aprendido desde que estoy en seattle, ya que todo el tiempo convivo con diferentes personas y diferentes culturas, desde el idioma hasta la comida, pero todos tenermos algo en comun, y es que estamos aprendiendo a hablar ingles.

Desde mi estadia aqui en seattle, no solo he aprendido a hablar mas ingles, sino que al mismo tiempo tienes la oportunidad de prender otros idiomas con tus amigos y companeros de clase, desde el Chino, hasta el frances, desde el Vietnamese hasta el arabe; oviamente solo a decir frases pequenas. Ellos tambien se prestan a aprender espanol con migo, desde palabras como, hola, adios; aunque ellos las primera frase que quieren aprender es “donde esta el bano?”

La comida tambien forma parte de Nuestros intercambios culturales. Nunca en mi vida habia probado un platillo tailandes, o el Falafel mediterraneo. Al mismo tiempo muchos de mis comapaneros ahora conocen mas la cocina Mexicana  gracias a mis recomencaciones. Tambien platicamos de nuestras formas de vestir, nuestra forma de gobienrno, nuestras celebraciones, hasta nuestras formas de saludar.

Gracias a esta oportunidad, ahora tengo amigos de muchas partes del mundo; desde asia hasta America del sur, y tambien he aprendido a convivir con otras culturas, y sobre todo empatizar  con ellas y respetarlas.

 

Translation…(also by Samuel!):

Láizì Seattle de wènhòu. Hello from Seattle. This is a Chinese word that is hard for me to pronounce, But also is one of the things that I have learned since I am in Seattle, and is because I can find a lot of people whit different cultures. From people who speak different languages, until the food, but we have also something in common that is Learn English.

Since when I have been here in Seattle, I not only learned English, at the same time, I have the opportunity to learns another languages whit my friends and classmates in the school; since Chinese until French, Since Vietnamese until Arabic, but obviously I learn some little words. They like to learn some words in Spanish with me too. Like Hello, or Good Bye; though the first phrase that they like to learn is “Were Is the Bathroom?

Food is part of our cultural exchanges, In my life, I had never tried a Thai dish, or the Mediterranean Falafel, But also some of my friends and classmates had never tried the Mexican food, Now they know more about Mexican traditional dishes thanks to me. Also we talk about our dress, our form of government in each of our countries, Our different celebrations, until our different ways to say hello.

Thanks to this opportunity to be here, I have a lot of friend from different countries; from Asia to South America, and at the same time, I had learned to share, empathize and respect them

 

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