This article was written by Charlotte Roy, who volunteered with iACT for Refugees in 2011 through the ACE Americorps Program and was employed part-time as an interpreter in 2012. She is now in medical school at Cornell in New York.

You really haven’t lived until you’ve heard a 5-year-old girl from the Democratic Republic of Congo sing along to the latest Britney Spears song. Destin is one of five children in what I call my “refugee family.” I got to know the Marons (not their real name) through my work as a French interpreter at Interfaith Action of Central Texas (iACT). I was there on their first day of ESL class, where I set up their voice mailbox and taught them how much the different coins were worth. From there on out, they became a second family to me. I saw them at my job, but I also visited them at home and helped the five kids with their homework. I took them to swim at the pool and showed them how to trick or treat on Halloween. And yes, we sang along to Britney Spears in the car on the way to the snow cone stand.

The father of the family had a way of speaking that was devoid of clichés and truisms. Like a great writer, he crafted new adjectives and metaphors to express his unique perspective on life. One day, many months after I first met the Marons, he turned to me and said, “Charlotte, tu n’as pas de frontières.” In English, “Charlotte, you have no borders.” It was the most beautiful compliment I’ve ever received and a remarkably concise way to describe how I want to live: without borders.

My work [at iACT] introduced me to refugees and asylum seekers from all around the world. Through my position as an interpreter, I met families from Central African Republic, Burundi, Rwanda, and Cameroon. The weekly iACT ESL class I co-taught was filled with adults from Bhutan, Cuba, and Iraq. These relationships have given me a profound appreciation for the diversity of the human experience and the resilience of the human spirit.