International Baristas of the Inn at Warm Springs

Emrys 0:00
Hello, my name is Emrys. I come from China.

Kamran 0:03
Hello, my name is Kamran. I’m from Azerbaijan.

Angely 0:07
My name is Angely. I come from Colombia, from Medellin.

Sage Tanguay 0:12
Those are the voices of three of the baristas at the Inn at Warm Springs. Given their diverse backgrounds and the fact that this is their first experience in the United States for all three of them, I became curious as to how it’s been going. They were kind enough to take some time in between latte orders to share a little bit about themselves. First, I wanted to know how they had ended up coming to Bath County in particular.

Emrys 0:35
Our agency, it’s working and travel in America.

Angely 0:40
We can choose a job offer from the entire country, from the entire US. So it’s not only like Virginia or something like that.

Kamran 0:48
But in my country, in my case, it’s common. A lot of my friends like came here before, okay, I heard about this program from them.

Sage Tanguay 0:54
They explained that through their agency, they are ranked by their English skills, and can both apply to jobs or be contacted by employers directly. I asked them how different the climate and environment was in their hometowns.

Emrys 1:08
Yes, the air, it’s very good! And you can touch some real American culture, its totally different.

Kamran 1:17
The place I’m from, my hometown is like, a semi-desert area. But we also have kind of like mountainous places like this. This looks like the same. It’s similar.

Angely 1:28
I mean, I think that most of the guys that are in these program, they’re from big cities. I came from a big city but actually doesn’t look like so different. But there’s some thing that I really felt that it was a very extreme change. For me it was the food. Yeah, it’s very different.

Sage Tanguay 1:47
While Emrys, Cameron, and Angely all work in the coffee shop, there are other young international workers at the Inn. When it comes to language barriers. Angely is more than happy to confront them head on.

Angely 1:59
We’re from the different countries so we’re the only ones who speak our own languages. So we need to speak in English all the time. So that’s like, a good thing about it. Of course, it’s interesting to know but other cultures because we are totally different.

Sage Tanguay 2:14
I wondered if they were interested in hospitality as a greater career path. All three of them are university students in their home countries.

Angely 2:21
I study something totally different, I study geological engineering. I knew that I wanted to speak the entire day, like some job that allowed me to speak with the natives that know like I had some job in my mind and something like that. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to be maybe in the countryside. Because, again, for me, it’s easy to find another person that’s speaking Spanish.

Kamran 2:45
Before coming here. I was working at the front desk in a hotel, maybe there is a chance that I will work in the hospitality sector in the future. I study international relations.

Emrys 2:54
Yeah, in fact, my major is Japanese. So I can speak a little bit Japanese and English. Our staff has treated me very nice. Very nice people. Yeah. I think maybe next year I will be back, just for vacation just for travel. Take my family come here, but these people are very nice.

Sage Tanguay 3:13
Finally, I requested that each of them share a song that they felt was culturally significant from their home.

For Angely, Carlos Vives “La Tierra Del Olvido” 

For Kamran, Uzeyir Hajibeyov “Arazbari”

For Emrys, “Kong Bai Ge”  by Aska Yang

Transcribed by otter.ai