Elizabeth, a very strong and outgoing Chinese woman, surprised me when she broke down in tears today in class. We started talking about how far we've come in English since January, the beginning of the semester. She described, in her incorrect and broken but basically understandable English, how when she arrived all alone in the US she couldn't understand anything the customs officials ("police" at the airport) asked her. The fact that this memory made her cry shows how stressful it can be to be an outsider culturally and linguistically. The good thing is, she and all the other students in class have come quite a long way in their language and cultural skills in three months.
Other students from Saudi Arabia described long ordeals at immigration after already having traveled for over 24 hours. Most were extensively interviewed, their belongings searched, some held in immigration offices for over two hours. They needed translators, but apparently there were none available. There was a simple misunderstanding for Mohammad, where the customs official asked him if he was carrying any cash. He said yes, about $900. His English was really non-existent at that point and the official thought Mohammad had said $19,000 or some similarly huge amount. So he was taken in for an interview and search. Only about an hour later did the offical think to ask Mohammad to write down the number, the amount of cash he was carrying. That cleared things up, thankfully.
If we look at these experiences with a positive attitude, we can chalk them up to memorable life experiences. Maybe they will teach us some lesson, or let us see things from another point of view, or at least feel happy about the moments in life when we are doing something more enjoyable than standing in line at immigration in JFK Airport.
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