Patricia Ortega
Fall 2003

My name is Patricia Ortega. I’m from Peru and I have been living here for 3 years. I consider myself as a normal girl. I have positive attributes and weaknesses as everyone else does. However, since I came here I experienced many changes in my personality from a shy girl to an independent, outgoing and friendly teenager.

My strongest personal attributes are generosity, my spirit of collaboration and my perseverance to achieve any goals and overcome obstacles in my life. For example, when I was in Peru I used to go to a hospital to help children with disabilities. I used to visit them very often. I played with them so that they could forget for a while about their sickness. At the time I could make them happy and they enjoyed a nice moment getting to know me. By helping them, I felt a great satisfaction with myself.

Not everyone is perfect in life. Everyone has weaknesses. One of mine is that I take everything too seriously and that makes me get irritated easily. It’s not that I’m angry all the time, it’s just I don’t joke around that much. I think I’m not very tolerant and I’m working my best to overcome it. On the other hand, people can know when I am happy because I have a big smile on my face and that shows them that I had a really good day.

People might say that I am not that talkative. When I was in school I wasn’t the kind of girl who goes and talks to everyone, unless I knew the person. I always had to wait for someone to start a conversation with me. That’s why in some way it was hard for me to make friends as a child, because of my shyness.

When my parents decided to come here, it was kind of a shock for me. First of all, the language and the challenge to start a new life, meet new people and adapt myself to the new and different customs worried me. Here in the United States, the fact that I didn’t speak English really well made the high school separate me from the other students, putting me into a different program; ESL. This program helped me a lot, because the teacher encourage us to not give up. She told us that it is good to experience sometimes some changes in our lives. That’s how we can learn more and improve ourselves. She also talked with the principal about doing a diversity program to help ESL students integrate more with the rest of the school. She encouraged us to talk about and to feel proud of the differences in our cultures. By overcoming this huge change, this experience made me grow more inside as a person.

Now, I am more independent, a little bit more outgoing and friendly. I’m more independent in the way that I have a job and I don’t depend anymore on my parent’s money. I can buy and have all what I want, but always keeping in mind to save for tomorrow. The opportunity I had of meeting new people from other countries made me realize that they had gone through the same situation as I did. That’s why when I started talking and knowing them deeply I began to feel myself more talkative, because we can share our experiences and ideas. Now I have two really close friends: one is from Brazil and the other one is from Ukraine. Since I met them I always go out, partying every weekend and spending some tome with them.