Photo by Maddy Rufo
By Gabrielle Pellegrin
Opinions Contributor
In two weeks, on February 26th, will be a special date for me and my family. We will be celebrating the three year anniversary of our arrival in the United States.
We celebrate our excitement of starting something new, in a different country, with different people, in a different school.
As a girl who watched all the High School Musical movies, I had a lot of expectations about how my new school was going to be. My little sister, then 8 years old, asked me anxiously if we were going to have to sing a lot.
I imagined the cheerleaders, the football players, the school spirit (something non-existent in a French school), the “mean girls”, and the cliques. I wondered how similar it would be from my childhood movies.
After the excitement came anxiety. I was going to begin school in the United States in the middle of my freshman year in March 2015. I could barely speak English, the only person I knew was my older sister, a sophomore, and I had no idea what to do when I got to my new school.
During my first week attending Newton South, the most commonly asked questions were: “do you miss France already?”, “do you like it here?”, “how is your school different?”, and so on.
However, my English was so poor I could not understand half of what people were trying to tell me. This handicap prevented me from having proper conversation with people, participating in class or even understanding the lecture the teacher was giving.
I mostly remember that period as one of loneliness. Since it is impossible to form friendships without saying a word, I was lonely and constantly missed my friends from France.
It took me a long time, approximately four to six months, to appropriate the language and to start developing real friendships.
In the three years I have been living here, my best friends have always been foreign students. Do not get me wrong, I love Americans too.
Being an ELL student allowed me to meet people with the same experience as I had. We did not judge each other on our English level, the way other American students sometimes did. We did not see each other as the last policy our government recently made or as stereotypes.
We always talked about our country’s culture, our family and friends who were away. Sharing experiences and supporting each other in a transition can create surprisingly strong friendships.
Newton South has been incredibly welcoming. Even though there is no cheerleader walking in the hallway in uniforms, or people singing out their feelings between classes, I do not regret moving here.
I do not regret the experience of learning of a new language, the friendships with people from all around the world, and the discovery of a new culture that made such a huge impact on my life. I am grateful for everything the people here gave me and I am proud to be part of this school.
