Automatic Attitudinal Response Rubric

This is a picture from 2011, taken at Norwich University in Vermont. The person you see in the picture is Rosemary and younger self.
I was in Vermont on a language and culture camp, a two week camp where we went to specific classes and activities to prepare us (400 students from all over the world) for a year as exchange students in American high schools. It was a way of reducing culture shock, and a way of getting to know people in the same boat, to share our fears before starting american school, and share our memories as we left.
As far as Rosemary goes, she worked in the cafeteria at the university where we attended camp. She is a little on the heavier side, short hair, no make/up ect. She would count the people from different camps coming in to eat. My first thought was that she was very American,  in the not positive way, that Im not sure I can explain because it is such a foreign concept (another ethnocentric position). She seemed like a sad person and alone person, and for a minute I felt like I was above her, as if me being me is better than her being here, for no other reason than the fact that I was young and about to experience the biggest adventure of my life, while she was stuck as a cafeteria lady.
If she read this, she would be disappointed in me, so would my parents, and so was I. Barely finishing these idiotic thoughts I was filled with shame for even thinking that I in any way was better than her. I decided to go and talk to her, only for a little bit, and you can say that she was my first introduction to American life, and she was such and interesting person, with a lot of life experiences. I started talking to her during my lunch every day, and we both got to talk about our different cultures, both learning something new from each other.
I learned from this experience that people are so freaking interesting! You learn so much more about a place and its culture by just being open to the people around you, and talking to a someone native to the place you are at will teach you so much more than what hours and hours of reading will teach you.
I kept in touch with Rosemary via letters for a while, last time I got a letter she told me that her house flooded and she had to move. The new letter did not include her new address, which I wish I had.
She taught me the lesson of not judging a book by its cover, because I needed to learn the hard way.