Norelly and Denily - Two Venezuelans at TCU

November 6^th Meeting:

It was a long day for me.  I woke up early, sat through two long content heavy science classes and conducted experiments in the research lab for two hours. The time was only 2 PM and I was worn out already.  I needed to distract myself from everything academics and I felt then that my appointment with Norelly couldn’t have come at a better time.  I then packed my bag and walked 1287 steps from Winton Scott Hall to the Campus Recreation Center where Norelly said she would meet me.

As I walked to the table where we regularly met, I saw not one but two people sitting and talking to each other.  I inched closer to the table and found without a doubt Norelly but also another unrecognizable person.  Norelly then introduced me to her friend, Denily, who is also with the Intensive English Program.  As a matter of fact, Denily is Michael Zeiser’s conversational partner.  Denily comes from Venezuela too and she is one of Norelly’s best friends here at TCU.  Norelly told me Denily had a few questions to ask me. I had no clue as to what the questions were pertaining to but I told her that I was willing to have them answered for her.  She nodded thankfully but didn’t ask me anything for quite a while.

Since it was Super Tuesday, I thought it would be a good idea to ask both of them about who they thought would win the race.  They both looked at each other and laughed blankly.  Norelly and Denily told me then that they didn’t know too much about American politics to predict anything.  They then asked me a few things in order to understand the whole process better.  They asked me about things like Swing States, policy differences, the House and the Senate.  Explaining all of the above seemed quite funny to me as I’m not native to the process and system myself.

Soon after I finished talking about the health care policies, Norelly pointed out to Denily and told her to ask the questions she had for me regarding my career.  Denily wanted to know what I was planning to do after college.  I told her about my future plans of going to either med school, dental school or graduate school.  They were astounded after hearing from me how long med programs would take to complete.  They burst out in laughter after I added the fact that every medical student starts off his/her career with nearly $300,000 in debt. It was an awkward moment for me.  I was sitting in the rec center with two people laughing at a state of living that I probably might recognize myself with in the future. I just let it pass.

Denily then remembered what she wanted to ask me.  She had to write about three Asian religions for one of her IEP assignments. She wanted to write about Christianity, Catholicism in particular, Islam and Hinduism.  She was catholic and she had friends who were Muslims.  This made her find someone who was a Hindu.  Norelly told Denily that I might be a Hindu as I’m from India.  So Denily asked me questions about Hindu scriptures and the Hindu gods. I explained the Hindu trinity of Brahma (the god of creation), Vishnu (the god of protection) and Siva (the god of destruction). Denily crossed her eyes when she found out that lord Siva was the god of destruction.  She asked me the reason behind a god for destruction and I answered her back saying that he destroyed evil only.  She smiled and I was happy that she wasn’t afraid of one of my gods anymore. She also asked about the different sects within Hinduism and I went on to explain the two major sects in Hinduism. To make things easy for her I explained that it was similar to the Catholic and Protestant denominations but not identical.

That was my religious talk for the day and Norelly gave me a packet of chocolate-hazelnut wafers that she got for me from Venezuela as a reward.  I thanked her for the kind gesture and she reminded me that I had to get her a plum from Market Square for her sometime soon.   I felt sheepish and promised to bring her one the next time they have one on display. We then discussed for a few more minutes on creative writing styles.  I explained how I wrote papers and they seemed to listen closely to me.  They told me that they’ll try it out the next time they wrote a paper.  I also asked Norelly how her typing practices were coming along and she told me that she was progressing well.  She also told me that her daughter has picked up typing along with her.

We shared a few other things about our weeks and then Norelly checked her watch before she told me she had to be elsewhere soon.  I asked her when we could meet next and she told me her availabilities.  We set up a future meeting time and stood up to pack our bags.  I shook both of their hands and waved goodbye.  I walked out that evening feeling a lot better. It surprised me as to how much knowledge I shared with Norelly and Denily in the past one hour. This surprise was filled with positivity; positivity that rejuvenated me.