Wednesday, October 24, 2001

Student finds different perspective of life in move to Venezuela
By Mark Lewis
Skiff Staff

While the children laughed and played in the street far below, a lonely teenager looked out her apartment window at a panoramic view of Caracas, Venezuela, and she started to sob.

Freshman Jackie Ghattas, then 15 years old, longed for her home a continent away, in North America.

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Ghattas, a pre-major, emigrated with her family from Houston to Venezuela in 1999.

Her father worked for a petroleum company, and the family followed where his career led him. Ghattas said moving meant more than finding a house to live in — it meant finding a place to call home.

“I had a home for 12 years of my life (in Houston),” Ghattas said. “Then I had to go somewhere where I didn’t know the language, where I didn’t know anybody. What was I supposed to do?”

When Ghatta’s father told the family they would be moving to Caracas in November 1998, it would be the second time moving abroad for Ghattas’ parents, who are from Egypt, but it would be the first time for their children. Ghattas received the news with disbelief.

“Yeah, right — I was moving to Venezuela,” Ghattas said. “I think I learned the capital from the song in fifth grade, but that’s about it.”

When her father left ahead of the family at the end of the year, she said the news came closer to reality for her. Ghattas said the hardest time was telling her friends that she was leaving.

“What do you say to someone that you won’t be there anymore after being friends with them for so long?” Ghattas said. “What if I never saw them again? I could never say enough to let them know how I felt.”

Little by little, the move invaded her life. Pictures in her house disappeared from the walls. Furniture vanished room by room. Ghattas had to maneuver between packing boxes to get out the front door. She said she fought the idea of moving, despite the evidence around her, but it ultimately came true.

The family relocated to Caracas and settled in a sky-rise apartment with a scenic view of the entire city. However, the view only reminded her of the unfamiliar reality.

Ghattas delayed dealing with her new circumstances by pushing the thought to the back of her mind and by pretending that her family was on an extended vacation.

“This is what we call the ‘honeymoon period,’” said John Singleton, director of International Student Services. “Then the culture shock hits.”

One day in April, Ghattas felt the shock.

“I was all alone in the new apartment,” Ghattas said. “I went to the kitchen, and there was a tiny table, and I sat down. I looked out the window and I started to cry. It hit me — I’m stuck here.”

Singleton said a person pulled from one culture and forced into another is in a very different situation than voluntarily going, like deciding to study abroad. It is especially difficult for a family to go through a career-influenced move, he said.

“Moving a family is a challenge because it is rarely a dual-partner situation,” Singleton said. “The family moves at two different speeds.”

Ghattas’ next challenge would be met on the school grounds. She missed her friends in the United States and she worried about being accepted, she said.

Ghattas arrived three-quarters into the year and had left her senior high school in Houston of more than 5,000 students for an academy with 500 students enrolled from kindergarten to twelfth grade. Her surroundings were small, but she said the environment was supportive, eventually coaxing her out of her shy demeanor.

“I was really cold (toward others) at first, and I didn’t want to try (to make friends) because I held on to the friends I had at home,” Ghattas said. “But it was a small international school, so others were in the same situation as I was.”

A sense of belonging is instrumental in adjusting, said Monica Kintigh, a licensed professional counselor who works for TCU. She said everyone likes to feel like they belong and that people care about them, and it may be easier to find in an environment of similar people.

“It’s important for the hosts to make an effort to welcome the new people,” Kintigh said.

A new perspective

Eventually, Ghattas said that the small environment proved beneficial because she shifted from being centered in her clique of friends at her large high school to knowing practically all the people her age at her new school in Caracas. Ghattas met the person who she now calls her best friend, and she came to realize negative aspects of her Houston friendships through her new relationships.

“In Venezuela, I realized what were my true friendships,” Ghattas said. “I realized I spent 12 years of my life with distorted friendships.”

After a year and a half in Caracas, the family was supposed to move back to Houston permanently. Ghattas went back to her old school for two weeks but was called back to Venezuela due to her father’s sudden reassignment. However, during her brief time back in the United States, she saw a different place than what she remembered.

Ghattas saw that her friends characterized what many abroad believe American friendships to be; marked by gossiping, drinking, drug use and rebelliousness.

“I stepped away and realized that I used to be like that,” Ghattas said. “I thought my friends changed, but I had changed. I had become open-minded.”

Singleton said people from the United States often are surprised about how much they learn about their own way of life when they see it from a foreign perspective.

“International students have a strong idea of who they are,” he said. “However, (American) students haven’t had to defend their culture before.”

A new home

Ghattas respected the friends she had in Caracas, who were family-oriented, mature and knew how to have a good time responsibly. She had missed them while she was in Houston, and was happy when her stay ended, allowing her to return to Caracas, she said.

However, her excitement about the move turned into disappointment when she learned her family had to move to Puerto la Cruz, several hours east of Caracas.
But there she found a paradise, and an easier adjustment than the first time she moved to Venezuela, she said.

“Puerto la Cruz is the most amazing place,” Ghattas said. “Tropical islands are 15 minutes away, and there are dolphins and beautiful water. It was hard to leave my friends, but they were still four hours away.”

Ghattas said the transfer to another city in Venezuela was much easier because she was already familiar with the culture and the language, and her network of friends were still relatively close-by.

Kintigh said that it is difficult to share emotions in a language and culture that’s not familiar to a person, and that knowledge is important in adjusting.

Ghattas said she knew the language and culture by then, and she had a strong network of friends, so her experience adjusting to her new city was different.

“I went into the experience with a positive attitude, and I wanted to make friends,” she said. “I wanted to make the most out of the experience.”

In Puerto la Cruz she met Sara Sanchez, a freshman elementary education major.

“I met (Ghattas) when she moved to Puerto,” Sanchez said. “She was shy at the beginning, but I think she did pretty well because she met people.”

Sanchez, who had moved to Puerto la Cruz just two years earlier, thought Ghattas adjusted well to the new environment because she knew what it was like to move into new surroundings.

Now, Ghattas calls Puerto la Cruz home. She said it’s home to her because the people whom she loves are there. And she misses it; in fact, she’s counting down the days until the end of the semester when she gets to return home for winter break.

Ghattas can reflect on the life she left as she looks out her dorm-room window, but although she doesn’t look over Caracas as she once could, and she doesn’t look north anymore. Instead, she looks south, to a family waiting for her, to a country a continent away and to the place she can finally call home.

Mark Lewis
m.e.lewis@student.tcu.edu