By Winnie Lin
For Luna Ramirez Castellanos, life at Princeton comes with an unexpected luxury: sleeping in until 6:50 AM. Back home in Bogotá, Colombia, her high school routine demanded a 4:45 AM alarm. Despite moving across continents, she bridges the gap through a phone call at 5:50 AM Colombia time to her eight-year-younger sister, Martina, each morning.
“It’s just that daily reassurance that they’re there, and that she’s there,” says Eduardo, her boyfriend, who has known her since their first week at Princeton. “That they remain in communication no matter what’s happening in either of their lives.”
The habit fits her busy family she describes as intensely close. Her mother, a teacher who trains teachers, and her father, who manages logistics for a consortium of manufacturers, worked long hours when Luna and Martina were growing up. Luna often found herself looking after her younger sister and cooking separate meals for Martina, a particularly picky eater. It’s part of why, she says, she thinks of herself as a “mini-adult.” Eduardo doesn’t disagree, but he’s also seen another half to that description. He remembers one afternoon on Cannon Green, him struggling through a paper, Luna beside him with a book of poems, neither speaking, as one of the more telling moments of their relationship. “She’s mature, thinks about things like an adult,” he says, “but she’s also excited and childlike in the way she reacts to things she loves.”
When Eduardo first met Luna during international orientation, he misread her. At a Whitman barbecue, he remembers her seeming “quite serious, even a little irritated.” He had expected her to be as excited as he was to meet another Latin American student. Months later, he understood the difference: Luna wasn’t cold, but had been navigating the nerves of a new place. After spending the summer together in West Harlem, he’d found she is “a very open, very happy person” and learned her mannerisms, especially the delight she shows when she tastes her own cooking.
Some of that childlike wonder, she says, traces back to Colombia. Luna calls herself a city girl, and Bogotá is the kind of sprawling, foggy, rain-pelting metropolis that trained her for it. Princeton’s quaint, suburban neighborhood took some getting used to; she says the sameness drives her a little crazy. Bianca, a close friend, isn’t so sure. “I’ve never seen her be bored on Princeton’s campus,” she says. “She always has some activity planned”—tango lessons, most recently.
Bianca first met Luna at a Whitman international dinner. They had hardly sat down before Luna explained which Colombian dishes Bianca needed to try and what she should see when she visited Colombia. Months later, when Bianca mentioned she had been accepted to a program there, Luna immediately wanted to know more. “We need to get a meal,” she remembers Luna saying, eager to talk more about Colombia.
“We are people people,” Luna says of Colombian culture. “I love people. I love hanging out with people. I love cooking for people. I love spending hours and hours, grabbing coffee, having a meal, being around them.”
When Bianca visited her in Bogotá last year, Luna gave up her own bedroom for the week. “She was very much like, do you want food, do you want me to cook you anything,” Bianca says. “She literally gave me her bedroom, just to make me feel at home.” In between, she took her to the Museo del Oro, the city’s gold museum, and made sure Bianca got to taste Bogotá’s street food.
Last December, missing the Novena, Luna “smuggled” ingredients into the Brown Co-op and made arroz con leche and buñuelos. Her friends then prayed and sang along, even when, she laughs, “none of them knew what was going on.” That instinct to care goes beyond the kitchen. “It’s made me very service-oriented,” Luna expresses. “I’m someone who loves to be there for others, loves to share.” This is consistent with how she spends the rest of her time on campus, often tutoring ESL and organizing a Spanish-language table that pairs beginners with native speakers so people, as Bianca puts it, “don’t lose their connection to their culture.”
Bianca has a phrase for Luna: “más colombiana que la arepa.” More Colombian than the arepa. At Princeton, from putting together Spanish-language tables at Whitman to making 5:50 AM calls to her family every morning, Luna carries Bogotá with her.
