“नमस्कार मेरा नाम कैथरीन है। मैं केैलिफ़ोर्निया से हूं। मैं अठारह साल का हूं।”

(Hello. My name is Catherine. I am from California. I am 18-years-old.)

“Bravo, Catherine, you are improving quickly,” my Hindi teacher, Vundananam ma’am, exclaimed with joy. 

Before the summer, I had already been straddling two different dialects at home. Especially within my family, I would speak the Cantonese dialect to some relatives and the Shanghainese dialect to others. 

But after the summer, I now know three dialects (to some extent). One of which is Hindi. But so much more has changed in my life since the beginning of summer than the addition of a new language. 

For my whole life, I have been used to being an only child. I was used to entertaining myself with my dog, keeping myself occupied, and living in a quiet environment. My life has been very consistent and easy to predict.

But then, I went to Delhi, India, with a U.S. State Department program known as NSLI-Y.  NSLI-Y is short for the National Security Language Initiative for Youth. It is a program open to all high school students and allows those selected to travel with a cohort on a merit-based full scholarship and live with a host family to intensively study a foreign language. Out of the six different programs or experiences NSLI-Y offers, I applied for the Hindi Program. And this experience left me with memories that I will never forget. 

Though I initially felt lucky to have such an opportunity, in the days leading up to the trip, I was quite honestly frightened and almost didn’t leave. The thought of living with people I have never met before, in a different country I’ve never been, and sharing the same experiences with students around the U.S. whom I didn’t grow up with made me very anxious. 

And that is to say that the reality wasn’t far from the hardships I anticipated. I experienced the worst case of homesickness I ever had. A few times, I missed my mother’s Shanghainese home-cooked meals, the absolutely plain American foods, the dry Southern California summer weather, and most of all, I missed my friends and family. For the cherry on top of my homesickness, I tested positive for COVID-19. 

The first few weeks were tough, to put it quite plainly, but my host family and cohort made me soon forget about the difficulties of being far away from home.

What I didn’t initially expect to be even more challenging than spending six weeks in a different country far from everything I grew up familiar with, was leaving and returning home. 

My host family made no mistake to teach me something new at every opportunity: more about cultural traditions, holidays, and Hinduism. Within the first few days only, my host family had already brought me around to meet every single member of their distant family. But the person who made my stay even better was my host sister. I spent long nights conversing with my host sister. Whether we were singing K-pop songs at the top of our lungs, working on my homework for Hindi class, screaming from horror movies, gossiping over drama within her school, watching Bollywood classics, catching up on “Stranger Things”, or even forcing her chihuahua Cujo to dance, I looked forward to these moments with her each day.

She made me finally realize that I do have a sister, and she lives 7,987 miles away on the other side of the world in Dwarka, Delhi. Her name is Paridhi, but at home we call her by her exclusive nickname बिल्ली (billee). She is absolutely terrible at math, just as I am, and though she might not show it, she has the biggest heart out of anyone I know. 

In merely six weeks, we’ve gotten to know so much about each other’s lives and personal experiences that we wouldn’t have really otherwise easily opened up about. And I know that though we may never know when the next chance we get to see each other in person will be, we know that we are always there behind each other for support. Similarly, though I rarely have the chance to contact my host parents now, I know they are always just a phone call away.

Thank you to my second family: to my sister Paridhi, my host mom Poorti, and my host dad Kushal for the unforgettable late night drives around Dwarka, family nights, and finally, for taking me as a family member of their own. 

Ultimately, NSLI-Y gave me a home away from home and my cohort friends—Sonia, Arya, Max, Ansh, Guillaume, and Liam—whom I laughed endlessly with through weekend excursions to street markets and through Hindi classes each day. Although we are now back home in our own different states across the country, living different lives, I feel immensely grateful and lucky that each of our unique stories somehow crossed paths through NSLI-Y.

Thank you NSLI-Y, for the special chapter of my life that I could have never imagined having.