sharing the life situation of a person - an unexpected encounter

A Hungarian mentor, a Puerto Rican mentee in the heart of New England, in one of the first thirteen states of the US, cradle of multiculturalism and ethnic diversity. What an unlikely match we were! At least they could have matched me a girl with European ancestry I thought first - not as if that would have guaranteed a well-balanced relationship between her and me though, that was a silly thing to suppose, yes, I know and I knew back then as well, okay.
The moment I met her I was extremely nervous, because I didn’t want to mess it up (being nervous of meeting a 12-year old and doing homework with her every now and then? Really? – I thought to myself at the same time though). Officially I was just a mentor, who was there in that middle school to help “one member of an ethnic minority group” do better in school. But this was by no means a satisfactory job description for me. I am a way more curious and sociable person than this, I wanted to get to know this kid once we were intended to “work together”. But how should I do this? I didn’t know anything about the way how Puerto Ricans live and make connections or communicate, what traditions and customs they have. I just arrived to the States a few weeks before and didn’t have the faintest idea about the general situation of the Puerto Ricans in the US … in fact I didn’t even know how the Puerto Rican accent sounds. The only thing I was sure about was my dedication. I was dedicated due to the fact that from the very first occasion on she was impatiently standing in the door of her classroom, waiting for me to arrive. I knew immediately then that I cannot let her down. Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon she was there, no matter what, wearing that awful dark blue school uniform, having her beautiful dark brown hair in a ponytail, holding her books in her hands, ready to make some educational progress in a world, where she experienced not only the feelings of many Americans that her “kind” simply just cannot make it, but where this kind of discrimination was reinforced every single day. She herself told me these observations she made, since as time passed we spent more and more time together, walking to my college campus and sitting in one of our cafeterias (where she anyways has never been before!).
During one of these occasions the feeling came to me (and stuck with me) that we were not that dissimilar after all. In fact, we were in the same boat, that of the minorities. We did become close.