6th meeting with Norelly

6^th Meeting – November 15^th

Norelly and I met up for the sixth time in the Campus Recreation Center as usual.  She waved and gave me the usual smile of hers.  We first exchanged a couple of things that we did over the week and she told me that she had been spending a lot of time with her daughter. Norelly had had a couple of instances where in she felt that she wasn’t spending enough time with her daughter. When she told me that she was spending a lot of time with her daughter recently, I thought that was as good as it can get for her. Norelly is a single mother who is living in the United States for the sole purpose of educating her daughter in English; a privilege that she didn’t have as a child.

Then we discussed about a number of things; topics ranging from politics to travel all within a short span of time. And then I asked her how she felt about her reading assignment as she had told me in our last meeting that she had been assigned a book to read for her IEP class.  She told me that she hated it.  I was taken aback a little when she said that.  Norelly then explained to me why she didn’t like the reading assignment and it seemed to make a lot of sense then. Norelly told me that she was just beginning to comprehend different sentence structures. The book however had complex structures and also had big words that we don’t use in our everyday life.  So she had to flip through the dictionary every other paragraph to put the word into context.  I can imagine how frustrating it’d be to refer to the dictionary every now and then.  In a way, she lost the big picture of the book by concentrating in understanding the few big words.  This type of a problem can quickly turn something enjoyable to something irritating.  I offered to help her with her readings whenever she needed me even after our eight meetings.  She was really happy.

I then told her about how, only the other day, I went to an Indian restaurant on the occasion of Diwali; an Indian festival that celebrates the coming of good over the evil.  She was really interested and heard me out carefully.  I told her how we all celebrate with one another and give each other sweets as a sign of happiness. Norelly then went on to tell me how in Venezuela, Christians only celebrate Christmas.

Norelly’s family believed that they didn’t have to go to church every week to be good Christians.  She told me how they would pray from home, work or while just experiencing a problem in an office and that would have brought them closer to god.  Norelly is also a firm believer in service to people.  She told me that she would like to spend more time doing something to help serve people and get closer to god rather than pray in a church for hours on a weekend.  She volunteers at Catholic Charities in Fort Worth and helps them with their daily chores.

We then spoke about what our plans for the rest of the week were and then it was about time for Norelly to leave to attend to her other commitments.  We set up another time to meet. I thanked her for her time and she smiled yet again.  I was walking out of the recreation center and found most of what she said applicable to my past.  I was never a good reader and I had trouble with understanding big words.  My family too, believes that you don’t have to show physical devotion to be a good Hindu.  It surprising how even though the both of us come from different parts of the world, we share a similar set of ideologies. I walked out pondering over this as usual.