Vivaldi Thomas 02/19/2019

Vivaldi Thomas is an ESL student from Haiti attending the Tulsa Community College Northeast campus. She shares many details from her life both in Haiti and here in the United States, including her work as a data clerk at a newspaper company before moving to New York to escape the political problems in her home country. She arrived in New York only one month after the 9/11 attacks, but remarked that the United States was a lot safer than Haiti. Mutual friends from New York then introduced Haiti to her husband from Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she then moved and has been living since. Vivaldi talked highly of her home country, apart from the current political problems, and described Haitian people as brave. While she loves America, she believes that Americans do not take the necessary time to breathe and enjoy what they have. She feels that we only focus on the future and need to enjoy the present. In Haiti, she said she attended church regularly, and spent her free time with her nine brothers and sisters, where they enjoyed fishing.