Overcoming a new challenge…

For all of the members of this project, this past week was full of excitement, anxiety and suspense. This was the week of the interviews at the U.S embassy. The two girls that were chosen to be part of our project were getting interviewed to see if they would get the visas. On Monday we got bad and good news. The good news is that they accepted the visa of one of the girls, the bad news is that they rejected the visa of the other girl. When we got the news, Melanie and I were truly devastated and didn’t know what to do, say or think. The entire day, we were feeling depressed because we had already made a strong connection with both of the girls. This is definitely something that we mentioned during the meetings we had with them, but we never actually thought about what we would say to them if their visa got rejected. They were aware of the possibility of their visa getting rejected but we were very sure that everything was going to go well, which is why we didn’t think of the “what if”. This is something that we would do differently if there was a next time. But as we continue with our project, we now have to think on what to do. We plan on changing the name of the plane ticket that was for the girl, and instead taking either a scholarship student from our school or a student from a public high school but that has a visa already. Before this, we have to make sure that the airline gives the option of changing the name. But for right now, we have to continue raising money, teaching Nayeli english, getting her involved with our community and making sure everything is ready for our trip on the 9th of December. Regarding the other girl who is Alison, we really want to stay in touch with her and hopefully find a way for her to receive another opportunity like this one in the future. Personally I think that from our part we could’ve been more organized with the time of when we had to do different aspects of our project, but at the same time there were many factors that influenced the fact that we started the whole process later in the year. If we would’ve started the process of the visas before, we could have avoided this inconvenience and even had a second chance to apply for another interview if one of them got rejected. These are situations that I’m definitely learning from and will help me in my future life. Even though it sucks and it’s a terrible feeling seeing how this girl’s illusion vanished, we still have to move forward and wish her the  best in life because we know that she is an amazing person, who will do great things in her life.