Greta Terene

“Moving to the US, I had not expected much. My mother had a revelation through her religious practices that Colorado was a calling and we needed to leave Nepal after my father’s passing. He took care of my family’s income so once that was taken away my mother had no other choice but to remove us from our private schools and find somewhere to settle down that could accommodate a widowed mother with two young children. I already spoke English because my father was white so I was fluent in Nepali and English. I think the biggest part of adapting was understanding that I wouldn’t see my family for a long time, my father wouldn’t be coming with us, and we would have to start from the bottom. A lot of things changed; I slowly lost my language because of ELA classes which pushed the agenda that I needed to ‘speak fluent English.’ The change included feeling as though I had lost a big part of my heritage: moving, leaving my culture and my family, and losing my language,” West Ottawa Sr. Becks Crespi said.