I can’t tell you how excited I was to move to Hawaii with my husband when he received orders from the Navy to report to Pearl Harbor. All I thought about was sunshine and warm weather and living by the ocean. We hadn’t been there for long when Bryan went to sea for the first time with the Navy, and there was a dinner on the base for the wives since all of our husbands were away. I didn’t really understand the directions to the restaurant and I asked for someone to meet me at a location that I was familiar with so that I could follow them to this place, but I was assured that it would be too difficult for me. The Navy base is next to the Air Force base and there is a small gate that allows you to pass from one to the other. It isn’t an easy gate to find and the rain didn’t make it any easier to see. I drove in circles looking for this gate for what felt like an eternity. Time was passing and I was horrified to be so late to an event that the captain's wife was hosting. Eventually, with my car nearly out of gas and my phone battery nearly dead, I gave up, parked the car on the side of the road, and cried. What was inescapable in that moment was that there was no one that I could call; everyone who loved me was living on another continent and in a different time zone. They were all asleep, and even if they had been awake, what could they do for me when they were an 11 hour plane ride away?
Eventually, a sailor driving by noticed my distress and very kindly drove to the gate I had been searching for so that I could follow him in my car. When I finally arrived at the restaurant, the ladies had already eaten dinner and many of them were leaving. I had completely missed the event and was now faced with trying to find my way back home, feeling like a complete failure. Fortunately, with the ladies all leaving the party, there were people that I could follow back to roads that I had memorized on a map.
Your time as a student in America will come with challenges, and no one can prevent that. In our program, however, we can be sure that you won’t experience how it feels to have no one to call or how it feels to be at the mercy of strangers, because someone is here for you.
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