BRANSON, MO — The following is a true story of how I made friends from around the world without traveling. It’s a heartwarming story of how I discovered a treasure in my own backyard.
June, 2004. I’m working as a photographer at Silver Dollar City. Employees have lunch served in the “host lounge.” A slender built girl in a purple SDC dress catches my eye. She looks foreign. Her nametag says “Tatyana.”
“I’ve never heard that name,” I say.
What happened soon after was a discovery for me. Tourism jobs were infused with “Work and Travel” program students on work visas from around the world. College students paid approximately $4,000 for the experience of living, working, and traveling in the United States for an entire summer. They filled high demand entry level jobs in seasonal tourism in Branson.
Tatyana was from Russia. She was part of a work and travel program with a J-1 student visa. The program allows students to get a firsthand experience working in the USA. Click here for details.
Beyond the students from Russia, China, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey, India, Poland, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Dominican Republic, and other countries, were a number of women (and a few guys) from Jamaica. Typically, the Jamaican women (mainly mothers) left their families for up to 9 months, living in less than desirable conditions in minimum wage jobs to provide a semblance of stability back home.
My Russian friend was the first
Tatyana was the first foreign friend I found in Branson. She offered me a free ice cream cone from the ice cream shop where she worked, but didn’t want to get into trouble, even though I was a fellow SDC employee. “You got your ice cream, now get out,” she whispered in her thick accent. So cute, so funny. We laughed about that one for years to come.
At the end of the summer, Tatyana was without housing. Her arrangements with SDC had ended, but her flight home was two weeks later because she was supposed to “travel the USA” on all the money she made during the summer. Ha! Minimum wage and having housing and food expenses didn’t allow for that. Other work and travel students’ parents funded their travels after their work requirement, but 19-year-old Tatyana had a single mom and no extra.
I remember Tatyana being cooped up in a cramped motel room on the 76 Strip with another boy from another country named Paul. No accommodations for opposite sex. No privacy. She never let me meet Paul. She sat outside her room at night, drinking beer and feeling sorry for herself.
I would take her on visits around town and introduced her to my young sons. We had a good time mixing cultures and stories that last week of her stay. We took a helicopter ride and got an overview of Branson and the lakes.
Afterwards, I kept up with her on calls and she eventually came back to visit Branson and stay with me in 2012. Tatyana was living on the East Coast then, having gotten tourism work in Atlantic City.
But not having a valid green card was a problem. She had gotten into exotic dancing on the East Coast to pay the bills and was drinking a lot. Eventually, my new wife Andrea and I visited her in Connecticut in 2013, and she was deported soon thereafter to Russia.
I still keep up with her. She has a husband and a daughter now.
Many more stories
There are many other stories of international students from around the world that I cherish. The memories are rich, all thanks to Branson tourism and Missouri State University in Springfield. I’ll have to share more about those later.