Four years ago, Cristhian stepped off a plane in the mountains of western North Carolina and into a new life. He had left behind a steady but tedious job at a bank in Colombia, where he grew up. He brought with him was a willingness to start over—and a determination to build better career opportunities for himself.
Cristhian quickly came to love Asheville’s dense, green mountains, but those peaks also symbolized the tremendous challenges ahead as he transitioned to a new culture, language, and community.
In Colombia, after getting his business degree as an undergraduate, Cristhian had spent more than seven years working at a bank. “I was hating my job, hating my life at the moment,” he recalls. “So when I saw the opportunity to come here and start again, I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’”
Starting over, however, felt like a grueling uphill climb. While waiting for his work permit during the immigration process, Cristhian took a job with a construction company—something he had never imagined doing after years in an office. “It was pretty rough,” he says. “I had never worked in construction before in my life.”
After about a month and a half, the company’s owner asked a simple question: Did he speak English? Cristhian told her he had studied some in Colombia. Soon he was moved from the construction site into the office, where he helped answer emails and schedule appointments.
“That was so much better for me,” he says with a laugh.
When Cristhian’s work authorization arrived, a new door opened. He applied for a position at Pisgah Legal Services and was hired to help Spanish-speaking clients complete intake forms that would determine their eligibility to receive pro-bono legal services like help filing their taxes, applying for health insurance, and applying for asylum or adjustment of immigration status.
“Compared to my job at the bank, it’s very different,” he says. “There, it was just money and sales. Here I feel like I’m doing something good for someone else. I feel like I’m literally helping people.”
Three years later, Cristhian continues to work at Pisgah Legal and he’s still climbing the mountain toward his dream of becoming a licensed social worker so that he can help more people find joy and stability in their lives.
Two years ago, Cristhian joined Asheville’s active running scene alongside many other Latino newcomers. He also committed to polishing his American English. Like many students in Colombia’s public schools, Cristhian had studied English for years in the classroom, “But we learned the same topics from sixth grade to eleventh grade,” he says. “The verb ‘to be,’ over and over. You learn things like ‘Hi, how are you?’” he says. “But when I got here people were saying, ‘How’s it going?’ and I was like, ‘What the heck is that?’”
Cristhian’s determination to improve led him to Literacy Together, where he meets weekly with his tutor, MaryPaul. Their sessions look less like traditional classes and more like conversations. Cristhian reads aloud, practices pronunciation, and writes short assignments that MaryPaul reviews with him the following week. Together they work through grammar, punctuation, and the nuances of spoken English.
One of the biggest challenges has been confidence—especially on the phone. “My job requires being on the phone a lot,” he explains. “Sometimes that makes me nervous because of accents or because I might not understand something.” To prepare, he and his tutor practice role-playing different scenarios. Those exercises, he says, have made a real difference.
Each week also includes writing practice, something Cristhian finds particularly difficult because English punctuation and structure differ so much from Spanish. But the steady rhythm of writing, feedback, and revision has helped him gain confidence.
Now Cristhian is preparing applications for a Master of Social Work program, which he hopes to begin online this fall, allowing him to keep working at Pisgah Legal while advancing his career as a bilingual professional. “Helping people is what led me to make the decision to go back to college,” he says.
Meanwhile, Cristhian is still running his race up the mountain. He’s also studying for the citizenship exam and recently completed his first Marathon! Mastering English–or training for a marathon–he says, doesn’t happen overnight. It takes patience and perseverance.
When Cristhian arrived in Asheville, he was starting from scratch—working construction, navigating a new culture, and struggling to understand everyday conversations. Today he holds a professional role, advocates for clients in two languages, and is preparing for graduate school.
“Every week MaryPaul and I meet, we talk, we learn. It doesn’t feel like a class—it feels like a conversation.” Those conversations, like the discipline of running several mornings a week, are getting him closer to the top of the mountain and the future he dreams of.
