Meet Lisa and Achini
The following success story was written by tutor and volunteer, Lisa:
I want to share something wonderful, and positive, and heart-warming that I have been doing the last few months! I have been teaching English to this wonderful woman, Achini. I am her tutor and she is my learner, (through our local literacy council). But mainly, she has become my friend. She is an immigrant from Sri Lanka. When I started working with her last January, she was very shy and her English skills were very rudimentary. I meet with her weekly, and she is very smart and works hard and has learned so fast, the difference a few months has made is amazing. Yesterday, she was able to tell me about how, and why, she and her husband and 3 young daughters left their family and homeland to come to this country. It was for the much greater education opportunities for their daughters, and they earned green cards through a lottery system. Their native language is Sinhalese, which has a different script and alphabet than English, and they are Buddhist. She was telling me about how they celebrate the full moon each month. Their country has a Christian population and her family observes Christmas, (her daughters like the tree and the lights), but she thinks our Thanksgiving is kind of strange. Achini is a wonderful cook and we often talk about food, and the other photo is a wonderful, spicy dinner she made for us recently.
It has been a gift to me to spend time with a person from another part of the world who is a woman, wife and mother, just like me.
