Once Upon A Time...
So... I'll start from the beginning! A couple of years ago, I was introduced to a girl, Nohora (Nori for short), in Milford who was staying in Boston as an Au Pair nanny from Colombia. I tried to translate for her but she knows better English than I knew Spanish! We exchanged numbers. Soon, we were meeting up in Boston and we invited her to our house for a Sunday afternoon. One day, I receive a call and Nori needed help. Things went awry with her host family and she needed a place to stay. Her organization wouldn't be able to help her until the following Monday, so I raced to Boston to pick her up. She stayed with us while trying to figure out all of the legal shenanigans that comes with having a visa attached to a job. In the end, she left to go back home and I watched her from platform A at the train station in Attleboro (sob) as she headed to Logan Airport. We've kept in touch over the years with lots of "Someday I'll visit"'s and "Wish you were here"'s.
Moving forward a bit... A few months ago, I was stressed with school, particularly an evil, evil professor. I was Facebook-messaging Nori one night and she said, "I hope you can visit someday and see my beautiful country!" Well... I AM my fathers daughter and I have a insatiable desire to see the world. I also have this SUPER neat thing on my computer where you open this map and click on a city and it shows you the highlights of life there, tourist hot-spots, nightlife activities, fashion, food, etc. We continue our conversation and I keep reading. After all, I'm "just looking." Innocently enough, my investigation turned to www.travelocity.com, my go-to travel website. Hmm... Prices didn't look too bad! (Compared to what I had seen for a flight over spring break! Oops. Did I forget to mention that I always look at plane ticket prices?) Anyways, I compare the price on the screen to the number in my bank account and before I even knew it, I had a travel itinerary. So now what? I had to tell Nori. I sent her a message, "I bought a ticket to visit you." Tenses (past, present, future) are tricky things when it comes to languages and she thought that I was just reiterating the fact that one day I would buy a ticket. A few mins after brushing it off, I start seeing the dot, dot, dots in the message. She is typing... All of a sudden, I get message after message with lots of caps and lots of exclamation points! She was excited and so was I! June 8-June 16. I was going!
Fast forward a little more to the end of my semester. RIC School of Nursing has this thing where you pass all of your classes and then they make you take an "exit exam" as a general form of torture for nursing students. It is called the HESI (stands for something...) and we hate it. It is out of 1500 points, 160 questions, is famous for being 5,000 times harder than the NCLEX board certification exam, and my school has the highest minimum allowable benchmark score to meet. Anyways, I was going to crush this thing and score a crazy high number, far surpassing the requirement. Unfortunately, I failed by 6 points. Sooo stinkin frustrating! I was super ashamed of myself and on top of that, the evil professor, Nan, was the one who told me my score. Well, I have an opportunity to retake. I'll just study like crazy and pass it then. "When is the retake?" I ask her. "June 8." Whattttttt!?!?! Nooooooo!!! The trip that I planned to GET AWAY from you is being ruined BY you?!?! Oh I was livid! And foregoing travel insurance because I knew I wouldn't need it? Big mistake. After many phone calls to some call center I can only assume was deep in the hills of India, it all worked out and I was able to switch it to today, the 9th. And I passed my exam yesterday! (Side note: Evil Nan still found a way to yell at me for passing.)
Now I am sitting in Logan airport, a little scared. Don't tell mom and dad though. Mom doesn't think I'm coming back. Austin thinks I'm coming back with baggies of drugs in my stomach. Mom thinks I'm going to come back married. Dad thinks I'm going to have a blast. Abby thinks I'm cool. (Woohoo!) Mom thinks I'm going to be trafficked. You get the point. I'm not freaked out by any of those things. Just the language. I have lost so much of it over the past 3 years because I had to let it go to focus on nursing courses. But I am armed with trusty apps and dictionaries. On the other hand, I am so excited. I mean, Colombia?! How cool is that!
I am making my way to the gate now as they start to board. Next stop: Panama City! I will have roughly 5 hours to find my connecting flight and will arrive in Cali tonight around 8:30pm, their time. Nori is picking me up, along with one of the friends there, Angel. He was the first to profess in the area and I assume he is dads age. He has 2 daughters who are around my age, not professing. Tomorrow I think there is a plan to go to the zoo, but I'm not sure. Can't wait!
Boarding now.
Love to all!
AmyL
Moving forward a bit... A few months ago, I was stressed with school, particularly an evil, evil professor. I was Facebook-messaging Nori one night and she said, "I hope you can visit someday and see my beautiful country!" Well... I AM my fathers daughter and I have a insatiable desire to see the world. I also have this SUPER neat thing on my computer where you open this map and click on a city and it shows you the highlights of life there, tourist hot-spots, nightlife activities, fashion, food, etc. We continue our conversation and I keep reading. After all, I'm "just looking." Innocently enough, my investigation turned to www.travelocity.com, my go-to travel website. Hmm... Prices didn't look too bad! (Compared to what I had seen for a flight over spring break! Oops. Did I forget to mention that I always look at plane ticket prices?) Anyways, I compare the price on the screen to the number in my bank account and before I even knew it, I had a travel itinerary. So now what? I had to tell Nori. I sent her a message, "I bought a ticket to visit you." Tenses (past, present, future) are tricky things when it comes to languages and she thought that I was just reiterating the fact that one day I would buy a ticket. A few mins after brushing it off, I start seeing the dot, dot, dots in the message. She is typing... All of a sudden, I get message after message with lots of caps and lots of exclamation points! She was excited and so was I! June 8-June 16. I was going!
Fast forward a little more to the end of my semester. RIC School of Nursing has this thing where you pass all of your classes and then they make you take an "exit exam" as a general form of torture for nursing students. It is called the HESI (stands for something...) and we hate it. It is out of 1500 points, 160 questions, is famous for being 5,000 times harder than the NCLEX board certification exam, and my school has the highest minimum allowable benchmark score to meet. Anyways, I was going to crush this thing and score a crazy high number, far surpassing the requirement. Unfortunately, I failed by 6 points. Sooo stinkin frustrating! I was super ashamed of myself and on top of that, the evil professor, Nan, was the one who told me my score. Well, I have an opportunity to retake. I'll just study like crazy and pass it then. "When is the retake?" I ask her. "June 8." Whattttttt!?!?! Nooooooo!!! The trip that I planned to GET AWAY from you is being ruined BY you?!?! Oh I was livid! And foregoing travel insurance because I knew I wouldn't need it? Big mistake. After many phone calls to some call center I can only assume was deep in the hills of India, it all worked out and I was able to switch it to today, the 9th. And I passed my exam yesterday! (Side note: Evil Nan still found a way to yell at me for passing.)
Now I am sitting in Logan airport, a little scared. Don't tell mom and dad though. Mom doesn't think I'm coming back. Austin thinks I'm coming back with baggies of drugs in my stomach. Mom thinks I'm going to come back married. Dad thinks I'm going to have a blast. Abby thinks I'm cool. (Woohoo!) Mom thinks I'm going to be trafficked. You get the point. I'm not freaked out by any of those things. Just the language. I have lost so much of it over the past 3 years because I had to let it go to focus on nursing courses. But I am armed with trusty apps and dictionaries. On the other hand, I am so excited. I mean, Colombia?! How cool is that!
I am making my way to the gate now as they start to board. Next stop: Panama City! I will have roughly 5 hours to find my connecting flight and will arrive in Cali tonight around 8:30pm, their time. Nori is picking me up, along with one of the friends there, Angel. He was the first to profess in the area and I assume he is dads age. He has 2 daughters who are around my age, not professing. Tomorrow I think there is a plan to go to the zoo, but I'm not sure. Can't wait!
Boarding now.
Love to all!
AmyL
No comments:
Post a Comment