I love my roommate Brenda. She's so good about getting me out of our apartment.
So tonight she dragged me to service club. All I knew was there was going to be free food. I went and there were a ton of ESL and international students. Oh crap. I was going to have to talk to people? Ahhhhhhhhh,. .. . ..
We were assigned a person to be "buddies" with and we were supposed to talk to them and help improve their English. For two hours. Ohmygoodness I haven't talked to ANYONE that long here.
I was assigned a hispanic/latino/mexican lady. Pick your own politically correct word. And I was grumpy. She was older. And looked not very nice. And I wanted to leave.
I am so glad I didn't. She was the nicest lady I've ever met. And I was so privileged to meet her. She came to the US 16 years ago when she was pregnant with her son and had 2 kids already. She asked me what I was studying in cool and I mentioned I might want to be a doctor and she told me back in Mexico she was a midwife.
Oh my goodness. What are the chances?
I told her that's what I'd want to be! Then she told me about being a midwife in Mexico. Her mother was one, and she would sometimes not be home for days because she had to deliver babies is all the villages. When her brother came here to work and sent money back her mom used it to build a big room so the mothers could have their babies there, and she could be home with her kids. The lady I was with started training to be a midwife when she was 14 and went to the hospital to study and get her midwife certificate. How cool is that?
But when she came here there was no way for her to be certified in anyway, even though she had been doing it for over 20 years. I feel like that is really sad and ridiculous. She was most proud of the fact no mother or baby died while she took care of them, because that's extremely common in Mexico.
We then talked politics. :) She's voting for President Obama. Yes. She's a citizen. She told me all about that. She studied for over a year to pass the citizenship test, and it took her 15 years to become a citizen. Her nerves really got to her the nights before, but she told me the only way she passed that test was because "God helped" her. How incredible is that?
She's a mother of four. Her oldest son is in the National Guard, her daughter is a sophomore at Snow, her next son is 16 and quite the lady's man, and her youngest son is 6. She works full-time at a laundry mat and her husband works in the fields out in Santaquin. They live in a tiny trailer and she spends her nights at English classes, trying to improve her English. It's pretty darn good.
All she could talk about was how much she loves her kids and how she is trying to raise them to be the best people they can be and teach them to have faith in God. I have never met a family that had so little, but they were the most cheerful, upbeat, happy people I have probably ever met. She really was an incredible example to me.
She told me to make sure I don't have any babies before I'm done with school, gave me a hug, and then said, "I will pray to God for you. He knows you."
I was supposed to teach her English and help her, but she taught me more about life in 2 hours than I've figured out in 18 years. I am so incredibly grateful for the opportunity I had to meet her.
