What am I getting myself into?

Today I was talking on the phone with my mom, telling her about my first day of training for my AmeriCorps VISTA position as Education and Technology Coordinator for the International Rescue Committee, a resettlement agency that assists refugees. She was asking what I had done. What had I done? It really was a blur. A big, confusing, hectic blur. I honestly can't recall anything that my good friend, and the person I'll be replacing, Elizabeth told me! She introduced me to everyone in the office and kept referring back to each of them and I was having such a hard time keeping everyone and everything straight.

Then, I was supposed to have a meeting with my direct supervisor at 11:00am, but by noon, Elizabeth and I gave up waiting so we went to the other office where I will spend the majority of my time. Everyone was out of that office assisting refugee families, so it was just Elizabeth and me. At one point, Elizabeth was taking a call and the phone rang again. She motioned for me to answer it. What?! Me? I answered, praying it would be something easy. Instead, it was a school nurse who said, "One of the refugee children has run away." I thought to myself, 'Oh man, what am I getting myself into?!"

After dealing with that minor catastrophe, Elizabeth got a call from one of the bosses asking her if the two of us could do 'an airport pickup' since they were pretty under-staffed today. This entailed picking up two refugees that would just be arriving in the U.S. for the first time and taking them to their new apartment and taking them to the bank to get them some pocket money for food for the weekend. When I told my mom this later on the phone, she said, "Oh, how fun!" She definitely didn't understand the enormity of the situation. She then asked me if they were here to study abroad. "No Mom! These are refugees! These people are leaving their countries because they have a 'well-founded fear of persecution'!" I feel like I've explained this to her a million times, but it hasn't stuck. She just doesn't get it.

So, at 2:40pm this afternoon Elizabeth and I went to the airport to pick up these two girls; refugees from Bhutan that first fled to Nepal and then were approved to seek refuge here in the U.S. Since they were older children, 20 and 21 years old, they had to apply to be refugees without their families but luckily their two uncles had been placed in Seattle the week before.

After a mix-up with flight numbers, Elizabeth and I finally found the two girls sitting on a bench at baggage claim clutching the only belongins they had in the world; a small bag with their documents and one duffle bag between the two of them. They were tiny and looked no more than 12 or 13 years old. And I have never seen anyone look as utterly terrified as those two girls. It definitely didn't help that Elizabeth and I weren't their when they first arrived. Within seconds of seeing them and the looks on their faces, my eyes welled up with tears and one rolled down my cheek. "Pull yourself together Carrie!" I thought. But I couldn't. These girls were about my age and, really, the only reason our situations were so different was because of the places we were born.

Their English was very limited, but while Elizabeth was pulling the car around, I tried talking to them even though I was completely at a loss for words. What can you say to someone that has been through what these two girls have been through?! They just left their country and everything and everyone they know, flew for 24 hours and are now in this completely foreign place scared out of their minds. One of them told me that she was so nervous that she thought she was going to vomit. Elizabeth was taking a little while, so I grabbed one of those Seattle Tourist brochures at the airport to show them some pictures of Seattle. They were obviously beyond exhausted, but the uncomfortable silence was killing me. I then found a map of Seattle and pointed at the airport to show them where we were. Then I pointed to the general area where they will be living, Tukwila. I then pointed to Fremont/Ballard where I live and one of the girls said, "Wow, you live really close to our house!" Well, not exactly.

Elizabeth finally pulled the car up and we loaded the girls in. Elizabeth told them to put their seat belts on, but she was received with blank stares. We both got out and showed the girls how to use a seat belt. After withdrawing some money for them from the bank, we took them to their two uncles' apartments who had arrived with their families the week before. When we arrived at the apartment, all these beautiful Bhutanese children came running out to hug their cousins. We helped the girls take their things inside and then after making small talk with their uncles for a little bit, announced we had to leave. The two girls got up and gave us each a big hug, thanking us again and again.

The whole experience was so powerful. I have read so much about refugees, but here I was, the first one to greet them when they entered this country from who knows what kind of hardships. And not that the hardships are about to end anytime soon. Not only did they have to learn to fasten their seatbelts, but will soon have to learn to navigate through a culture so vastly different from theres. Everything will be a challenge; buying groceries, figuring out the kitchen appliances, using the bus, not to mention learning English, getting a job, doing bills and learning the little cultural norms that are so engrained in the rest of us that we don't even notice.

But at the end of the day when my mom asked me, "So, what do you think? Are you going to like the job?", I thought about the seemingly insignificant act I had done today and the gratitude I had received and thought about all the opportunities I will have in the coming year to directly help people and make their difficult situations just a little bit easier, and I had nothing else to say but, "I think it will be the most rewarding experience of my life."

(The picture is a sign for the International Rescue Committee (the IRC))