Shy? Leidy Shields? Most certainly not. She’s the hyper, lively girl on my soccer team, the giggly freshman who does not go unheard of in the hallways. I had a hard time imagining her as the quiet fourth grader she claimed she once was.
But I also had a hard time imagining being dropped off at an orphanage as a seven year old with a younger brother and a stepsister to worry about. Nor could I imagine having to move 3,800 miles away from my sister without the chance of saying goodbye. I can’t imagine trying to learn a new language and start a new life in a foreign country either.
Intrigued by what I had just heard, I gently pressed Leidy with a question regarding the orphanage she mentioned. Due to the sensitivity in this topic, I naturally expected nothing more than a broad response, however, was instantly proved wrong and put to ease by her openness towards the subject.
“One day my dad was like ‘Let’s go get ice cream!’… He put us in the taxi and we got to this house… I think he talked to them ahead of time because… he didn’t talk to anyone, he just dropped us off,” Leidy said.
Despite her comfort with me, I could tell she was being very cautious of her word choice. It’s not very often that you hear Leidy’s loud, monumental tone at a minimum library voice, or that you see her take an extra second to reflect what she is about to say. I knew this was serious.
In Leidy’s 16 years, she had gone from her home in Colombia, to an orphanage in Bogotá, to her current home in Falls Church, Virginia. She arrived to the United States with her little brother, Carlos, in the summer of 2009 through Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar, a program promoting adoption in the United States.
This isn’t something every orphan gets the chance to do.
“They picked kids who they knew were going to be able to adjust: [those who] were resilient, optimistic, and positive. That’s the reason that they were chosen out of the hundreds of thousands of children, because of their core,” Patty Shields said, their adoptive mother.
That same strong core that led them to be selected to visit the Unites States is what instantly drew the Shields to them.
“They came out the door in the airport with a large group of kids for the summer camp and I felt like I had picked out Carlos and Leidy immediately. Both of them were just filled with so much energy and excitement,” Wyatt Shields said, their adoptive father.
That same spirit Leidy’s parents saw that day is what people see everyday at Mason. It’s the out-dated dance moves she performs unembarrassedly, yet still pulls off in the school hallways you see, the roaring laughter you hear every two seconds in the bus, and the silly snapchats you realize she just took of you. All these things that might considered ‘self-humiliating’ to some, are simply embraced and pulled off by Leidy.
“The person you see today is the same person I met six years ago,” Mrs. Shields said.
Easily, I could imagine a very cute miniature Leidy dancing and laughing in huge crowds of people. However, after learning about Leidy’s past, I still couldn’t picture a shy, little Leidy. I mean, it’s Leidy Shields we’re talking about!
Soon enough we got to talking about her first year in America and I began to understand the source of her anxiety in the past.
“I had no idea what was going on. I felt so uncomfortable and confused, people scared me,” she said about her first day of school.
This response was no surprise, as the first days of school are frightening for just about anyone, but can you imagine going through school everyday, not knowing how to say anything other than ‘hello’?
“If you were to ask anyone in my grade what I said in third grade, they say, “ah?” she laughed.
Her first few years here consisted of finding her own bearing, figuring out the American customs, and of course, learning the language. These things obviously required a lot of time and patience to fully develop, so how exactly does one learn a whole new language in such a short amount of time?
Leidy, now sixteen and fluent in English, credits her teachers, friends and family for her speedy success in learning the language. Oh, and also Hannah Montana.
“They [teachers at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School] gave my mom a lot of those first grader spelling books and she just made me rewrite things. I got a tutor that helped me speak English well and my friend, Nicole, helped me. She made me listen to Hannah Montana and that’s when I fell in love with her,” she laughed.
The Shields family does not know much of Carlos and Leidy’s younger sister, though they do know that they want to visit Colombia in the future.
“I think that the country of your birth is a part of you forever…. That’s a part of her cultural history we don’t want her to lose. So when she’s ready, we are more than willing to take her brother back there,” Mrs. Shields said.
I could go on about the amazing support system Leidy has had throughout this experience including the Shields for taking her and her brother in and providing for them, Ms. Nicolais and the other teachers in the FCCPS schools for helping Leidy catch up in school, and even Hannah Montana for inspiring her to learn more English. But the truth is, none of this experience would be the same if it would have happened to anyone else but Leidy.
Leidy was able to overcome the many obstacles throughout her life by bringing her positivity and resilience everywhere she went. No matter where Leidy Shields goes in life, I know she will be able to climb every mountain in her path and laugh the whole way down.
