By Sam Juarez and Isabella Bossio, Translation Team & Staff Reporters
November, 2021
During April of 2021, Kipp Austin Collegiate student Isabella Bossio Sarmiento arrived in the city of New York for a new beginning. As exciting as it sounds, it wouldn’t be too easy. Coming from the Spanish speaking country of Colombia would have its benefits, as well as its hardships. Here is her story.
In the quarantine of 2020 due to the pandemic, everyone went through difficult situations: being jobless, not being able to pay debts due to a lack of money, not being able to socialize, etc. My country, Colombia, is located in Latin America and is rich in natural resources. It went through one of the biggest unemployment crises in 2020 (which continues to this day) because of the pandemic. Many people could not support their families because they could not go out to work or were in mandatory confinement, resulting in the rate of those infected by COVID-19 to rise. This caused people to go into a panic, yet they refused to go on lockdown as they wanted to avoid starvation.
Colombia is divided by the economic status of each person, placing them in a different sector in each city. There are six types of sectors in the country (zero, one, two, three, four, five, and six), with zero being the poorest and six the richest in terms of money and resources. These sectors affected the people the most during quarantine. The people of the lowest sector were the most affected by the crisis in the country since they lived on the money they worked for in a day. If these people did not work, they would be unable to support their families economically or in terms of food.
My family has always been in the third stratum, so we had economic stability for the necessities and everyday essentials. My father is a musician and also worked for the mayor of my city, Bogota, as a music teacher for children with disabilities. Our income came from the salary he earned monthly from that job, as well as the presentations or tours he did with his musical group. My mother worked at home making costumes or outfits for people. However, when quarantine started, everything was paused or halted, causing my dad to be unemployed for five months, weakening our economic stability. During that time, my grandmother and my maternal aunt, who live in New York, were able to help my family economically. My parents analyzed the situation we were going through and took note of the fact that in one year I was going to finish school and attend college, which would be very expensive. They decided that in 2021 we would move to the United States to have better economic stability and so that my sister and I could have better educational opportunities.
And so it was that in April 2021, we took a plane to New York to start a new life different from the one we had. I had never in my life left my country, so it was a bit shocking to see the visual change that I had when I arrived in this city. In addition to the language (which is not my first language and only knowing a few basics), it made it very difficult for me to communicate verbally. We spent about a week in New York to get to know it more and to spend time with part of my family, which I had not seen in years. After that, we went to Austin, Texas by car because my family and I have always liked to travel by road to get to know the country a little more. As we did this, we realized that we were about to experience a major change in our lives, and we understood that it would be just a few days away from that.
We arrived in Austin and settled in an apartment and my mom was looking for a school for me and my sister to attend. We spent the summer at home and hardly went out because we didn’t know the city very well and we didn’t know anyone. As the days went by, the day that made me the most nervous was approaching. The day to enter school here since I had never been a new student in my country and in addition to that, it was a language totally different from Spanish.
The day arrived, and never in my life had I felt as nervous as I did at that moment. When I entered the place, it was very shocking to me, whether it was the structure of the school, the freedom of some things for the students (being able to dye their hair and have it as they wanted, not being so strict with the uniforms, allowing piercings, etc.), the freedom that the teachers had to dress as they wanted. The educational system was completely different from the one I had been part of all my life in Colombia. Compared to my country, you have to take more or less 15 or 16 mandatory subjects a week. You have to wear the uniform impeccably as the student manual says (the school rules, which they make you read at the beginning of the year). You have to be disciplined in extracurricular activities or school extras, and you cannot use cell phones during school hours or you get points taken off in the discipline of the year, etc.
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