Passport Stories

Passport Stories

The Cult News| October 2014

By D. Blandón

In my mind, I had lived that moment a thousand and one times: A large group of people would be holding red flags and signs randomly, and perhaps someone would be playing a rattle while waiting in the crowded lobby of a gigantic airport –Because in my mind, everything in the US had to be gigantic. However, then, I passed through the glass doors to the modest lobby of an airport that did not have trains or subways because they were not needed. I ran into 2 people in their twenties with tired, friendly faces, wearing a matching red shirt with the International Orientation Monmouth College’s sign on them. Our eyes met wondering if we were the people each one was expecting. One of them was a blond girl, Sarah. She did all the initial talking with a very soft voice, slowly, as if she were thinking how to say things properly. By then, I thought she was being polite to make sure I would understand, but after having her as my favorite neighbor for 9 months, I learned that that was just the way she spoke.

“I will get your suitcase” said the tall man in a cap and shorts. “Thank you. It’s all wrapped up in plastic,” I said. I felt proud of the natural way I had spoken and how well I had pronounced the phonemes in the sentence. Those were the first words I told one of my now closest friends whom I plan to visit someday soon in Canada. When we headed to Monmouth College, I noticed there were no big buildings everywhere, and when we got to campus, it wasn’t as cold as I had expected it to be.  Two of the chaperons assigned to my group guided me to the apartment –It was “my apartment,” as I used to repeat to myself with a smile.

As an international student, I was requested to arrive a week earlier than my roommates. Therefore, it was all empty and quiet. It wasn’t at all like I had expected it to be and I was loving it. I unpacked my clothes, thinking of the days I would wear them and found a place for my notebooks and pencils, inspired  by the thought of  how much I would study and learn that year. That night, I lay down on my brand new set of bed sheets, noticing for the first time the whistle of the train passing by. It was then that I started believing that this was indeed happening to me. It was the start of an exciting 9-months journey.

Indeed, those empty walls from the apartment started getting filled with memories and fun stories, with pictures and lights. Ahead of me were the awkward self-introductions in a room full of international students, -So many times we had to introduce ourselves as a group to the university staff that I can still hear everyone’s voices, stating their countries of origin as if they were their last names-,  the adaptation process of living with three more women from very different backgrounds, the nights spent looking at the ceiling of my room with my roommate on the next bed talking my homesickness away, the seemingly endless minutes I got lost without a phone in Chicago because my friends have long legs that walk faster, the unforgettable nights out, the empty space in my stomach during Watson’s  American Contemporary Literature class, where all the students were clever, critical and participative, and that one day when they turned their heads to the unheard voice of the Costa Rican girl that dared to speak in class even with her accent, the nights at my host mom’s house eating and talking to her intellectual friends, the crunching sound of snow under my boots, the glorious feeling of being able to ski smoothly down the hill with a hurt leg, the jokes and puns I never got in class, the library that opened until midnight, the cafeteria at the library and all the life-lasting friends I met.

And then I finally came back home. I walked through the Juan Santa María Airport with the same passport that I took with me to leave in the first place, yet I was not the same Daniela. I left my old suitcase at campus because it was too small. I came back carrying not only a bigger luggage, but also bigger ambitions and ideas for my future.  Amidst kisses and hugs from my family, I put an end to the 9-month experience that once seemed so unreal. I knew that this was not the last time that my country would welcome me back.