The Bridge from Copan to Ankeny

Peter Noll

Carol Severino

Writing About Traveling

10/1

The Bridge from Copan to Ankeny

Several years ago marked 30 years of the exchange program between my high school and a school in Mexico City, called Copan. I went to Ankeny High School: Ankeny is a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa that is too proud to call itself a suburb. My school had an overwhelming majority of white, economically-comfortable students, who indulged in all things from popular movies about high schoolers; the “rebels” vaped in their cars in the school parking lot, everyone knew the gossip about the popular cliques, and the “nerds” preached pridefully about their D&D adventures. My group, or cult really, was with the music department. The hierarchy of show choir and drama seemed to rule my world during that time.

About a dozen students from each of the schools were chosen to be apart of the exchange program. Since the trip would have interfered with my choir schedule, I didn’t apply to go to Copan; however, I did get the chance to meet the students who visited us. I studied spanish in high school for five years, which seems like a long time, but, according to my spanish teacher, my class could speak as fluently as a three year old native spanish speaker.

I remember the Copan students bright faces as they first went around the cafeteria being introduced to people. A good friend of mine was hosting one of the girls from Copan.

“Laina, introduce me to your friend” The girl said.

“Oh. Yeah. Aletssa this is Peter” Laina said.

“Hi!”

“Hi!” she said as she smiled a big grin. That was the end of our conversation that day. I remember thinking ‘she must not know that much english, but she’ll laugh at my spanish if I try to talk to her that way’.

It turned out I was wrong.

At one point in the week, a group of students, Ankeny and Copan, started to talk about fluency in each others languages. A Copan student said “I’ve noticed most of you guys don’t know that much spanish. That’s okay though”.

“Yeah, we first learned world languages in class in 7th grade” I replied, “When did you guys start learning english?”

They giggled. “Very early, like, as long as I can remember” Aletssa said.

They were only at our school for one week, then they returned to Mexico and our students were sent over for a week. A couple days into that week, Aletssa really started to warm up to our school. I could tell she liked being in America at my school, but I could also tell she felt distanced from us. That isn’t to say we didn’t have our similarities. For example, they came during the time of the presidential race with Hillary and Trump. One day, I apologized sincerely for Trump’s threats of the wall.

“Oh. We think he is funny, he is so ignorant. You guys aren't really going to elect him”

If only, Aletssa.

At the end of the week, as tradition, the Copan students held a presentation for all the spanish classes. In the presentation they talked about Mexico: the food, the music, the celebrities, the celebrations and the pop culture. At the end of the presentation, they showed us the dancing the kids do in Mexico. They asked for volunteers to dance with them. Of course I wanted to dance. However, voluntarily standing up to dance would have made it seem like I cared too much and caring about things in high school isn’t “cool”. The Copan students started to weave through the seats, plucking students to join them. Aletssa make eye contact with me. Her face lit up with that big grin and she bee-lined towards me.

“Come on. Come on. Stand up. You have to join.”

I joined the group up front and a song started playing. The Copan students taught us how to step and shake our hips to the latin beats of the music. Most Ankeny dancers struggled, but, thanks to my show choir experience, I didn’t (as much).

When the week ended and the Copan students left, a certain liveliness and joy left with them. Ankeny High School returned to the dull grind it was in before and I felt a new obligation. Time after time, Aletssa reached out to me. She wanted to build a bridge between us: an American student and a Mexican student. I made little effort to do the same, even though I wanted that connection with her. I think, like me, some Americans think it is the foreigners job to learn our language and forgive our ignorance, but better connections can be built if everyone reaches into the the global sphere and open our lives to others.