A recollection of 9/11 and Foreign exchange students in a post-apocalyptic world

I'm still on my writing binge, and another topic that has come up is how foreign exchange students would handle a scenario such as one in The Storm Series.

Imagine being thousands of miles away from home with no way to tell your family that you're safe and no way to get back. Not only that, but you barely speak the language of the country you're in. If the power would go out right now, like it did in the book, there would be thousands of students across the country in this predicament.

This topic comes to me from experience. I was a freshman in college during 9/11, and I hung out primarily with most of the foreign exchange students in my college. They were an amazing group of people, and I learned so much about different cultures during that time. Most of them were juniors, and they hailed from all over--Northern Ireland, Venezuela, Rwanda, Spain, Mexico, and Russia. I fit in with them so much better than I did people from my own country (though I didn't know nearly enough about soccer), and they would joke with me that I could be considered European if I didn't love chocolate and cheese so much. My friend from Northern Ireland, Peter, would get so mad at the vending machines. "Look at this! There's not a single thing in there that doesn't have chocolate or cheese in it!" I laughed so hard, because he was right.

I got him a chocolate cheesecake for his birthday. He was so pissed. :)

Anywho, one sleepy morning in September I had stumbled down to the computer lab to finish a paper that was due at 9am. Suddenly a student bolted into the room and announced that the World Trade Center had been hit by an airplane. We didn't realize the severity of the situation yet, like most people, but the details started trickling in. Class was cancelled for the rest of the day.

I remember seeing this one student just standing outside of one of the buildings, his eyes distant. We'd never spoken before--he was a jock and I most assuredly was not, so we didn't run in the same circles--and he just looked at me with tears in his eyes. "I can't be drafted," he said. "I don't want to go to war."

I was only about an hour away from where Flight 93 crashed, so I headed to the student lounge to try and get a hold of my parents to let them know I was safe. Almost no one had cell phones yet, so I tried to call them on the pay phone. The phone lines were all tied up. I gave up after a while and sat down with everyone who was gathered around the TV. I watched it numbly, unable to process what was happening. My foreign friends were scared, needless to say. To be that far away from home in a country that might be going to war? What would they do?

We sat around for quite a while that day watching the TV, and my friends started sharing stories from their own countries. My friend from Venezuela told us that you couldn't speak against the government in public for fear of being shot. My friend from Rwanda told gut-wrenching stories about having to lock themselves in a school and seal the doors and windows to protect themselves from killer bees and how he helplessly heard people being killed in a neighboring apartment, knowing that to help them would spell his own demise. The Northern Ireland Troubles was still going on, so car bombs were always a concern for my Irish friends. I just sat there, this naive 18 year old, amazed that people lived like that. Their stories still haunt me to this day.

There was a prayer circle in the yard that evening, hundreds of us from different backgrounds joined together, praying for everyone affected by the terrorist attack. The night sky twinkled with the blinking lights of planes in the sky. I'm not sure if they were military planes or commercial planes that weren't allowed to land, but I'd never seen so many aircraft in the sky at once.

Most of the foreign folks I hung out with spoke English quite well--either it was their primary language or they'd had a few years of English under their belts before coming to the states--but the students from Russia seemed to struggle the most. One was a little more proficient with the language than the other, so she would often help translate.

Because of this, when writing Braving the Storm, I wanted to make sure the foreign student dynamic was included in the story. The third book in the series goes a little more in-depth about one of the students, Manuel, who joined the militia. He spoke broken English in the second book which drew the attention of a few closed-minded individuals. We see him again in the third book, this time much more proficient:

“Can you hand me the rubbing alcohol, Manuel? I don’t want this getting infected.”

“Sure thing,” he said, handing her the bottle. “Should I get another bottle from the cabinet?”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Christine replied.

“Your English is getting a lot better, Manuel!” Steve observed. Manuel had been a foreign exchange student at the school, and his grasp of the English language was limited when he arrived. Also a member of the militia, Steve recalled Manuel struggling to get ideas across in their meetings.

Manuel beamed, nodding. “We did not have much to do in the winter, so everyone helped tutor me. I think they had fun teaching me.”

“The local library had children’s books for different reading levels,” Tony explained. “We started with some practice workbooks, then we started helping him read out loud. He started with Miss Nelson is Missing!, The Magic School Bus series, and Where the Wild Things Are, all of which he got through pretty easily. Then we read Charlotte’s Web and My Side of the Mountain. Currently we’re getting through the Harry Potter series. He’s made so much progress.”

“And he does the characters’ voices when he reads,” Christine added with a chuckle. “Some of us gather and listen to him read the books. It’s like listening to a radio show.”

“Good for you, Manuel!” Steve exclaimed.

Manuel flushed. “Thank you, Mister Steve.”

“Please, Manuel, just call me Steve.”

While stuck in a less-than-ideal and downright terrifying scenario, I have hope that the students would band together regardless of background, just like my school did the night of 9/11, and work together to make the world better if anything like The Storm Series ever happened to this country.