Meghan has been my friend for many years but the one reason why we bonded so quickly because we always have awkward things happening to us. Our friendship grew but this past year was hard because Meghan moved to Mexico for a study-abroad and ended up getting a teaching job there until this last December. Now she moved to Paterson, NJ as an AmeriCorps person working in a bilingual community, putting her passion for Spanish and helping others to good use.
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I have spent the last few months juggling in my mind what I want to do with my life, going back and forth and coming up with a new plan every day. Then, in one day, I was offered a potential husband, a job, an apartment, a second family, and a car. You might be asking yourself right now- how can I do that too?
I had met up with a client for work to help her with translating documents for her kid’s school. Somehow, this turned into me going to her apartment (in a very scary part of Paterson where she told me never to walk alone). After being in her apartment for over an hour just talking about life, I began to wonder why she had called me to come over! But I blamed this on a language misunderstanding… maybe I was missing something because we were speaking Spanish.
Casually, she brings up that they are illegal immigrants and starts to tell me about their life. I had told her earlier that I didn’t have a car, so she mentioned (jokingly I thought ) that I could just move in with her family for free, and then I could use their car all the time and drive them around (since they don’t have licenses)- it’d be perfect for all of us! I laughed (convinced this was a joke), but when she brought it up later, I realized it definitely wasn’t! But I explained to her that I already have an apartment, and she said well just move out! Hmmm seeing as she wouldn’t even let me walk down the street to the bus stop at 6:00 PM because it was too dangerous that late at night, I’m thinking this isn’t the place I want to move to. But I just explained that I already had signed a lease that I couldn’t get out of.
Then she explained that she had invited me over to see if I could tutor her 2 sons (who are in elementary school). This explains the job part of my first statement- the most normal thing that happened that night.
She tells me about her whole extended family- and that her husband has a 24 year old son from a previous marriage a half hour away. So she decides to call him, hand me the phone, and tell me it’s my new friend! I start speaking to him in English (not knowing what language to talk in) and he didn’t understand anything… eventually I just handed the phone over saying I don’t know what to say to him! She asks me when I can start tutoring and we agree on Tuesday, so she asks him if he’s free on Tuesday.. Hmm I sense a set up. When I told my boss (who’s from El Salvador) the story, he says he thinks she’s trying to get me to marry her son to make him legal. Thankfully, I got stuck at a meeting that day and couldn’t go over!
The conversation continues and she invites me to dinner, to her family party the following day, to her son’s communion. She wants me to take road trips with the family so I can drive them, to come sleep over sometimes, and to attend family events with them. How did this all happen when it was the second time we were meeting??? Is this a genuinely nice Latin American family like I found all over Mexico or are they using me to get past the restrictions of being immigrants, or a little bit of both???
This is just one of many strange things to happen to me since I moved to Paterson. Other events include getting offered chocolate by an extremely high guy on a bus- and him insisting over and over again as we got stuck in non-moving traffic as I was just hoping we would move so I could escape; asking for directions from a taxi driver who told us to pay $5- which we of course said no we’ll find directions somewhere else- and she felt bad so she followed us and told us where to go when we reached our next stop; having everyone assume I’m latin american (by the way I am very Irish looking- blonde hair, blue eyes, you know) and talking to me in Spanish, which half the time I get and the other half I don’t; getting constantly hit on by the grandpa across the street; being told that it doesn’t matter that I’m an AmeriCorps volunteer because when in Paterson “you come on vacation, you leave on probation“); living in a place where Spanglish seems to be the official language and to my amazement most people can think in 2 languages at once and switch back and forth throughout a single sentence; and just living in a city that seems to be in its own planet in general.
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