Different Perspectives

Last night I gathered with my English as a Second Language students for our final class of the semester. Before digging into another dry reading comprehension exercise, we just sat and talked, which, to be honest, is the main reason that Thursday night is often the highlight of my week. At various points over the last few months, I’ve learned that: my friend from Turkey is a Kurd whose parents live just north of the Syrian border (I learned this on the day that Turkey gave the U.S. permission to do fly-overs); my friend from the Sudan, a refugee, spent several weeks circumnavigating the civil war in the south, much of his trip on foot, before finally receiving his papers in Khartoum and heading north to Cairo, where he spent several more weeks waiting for asylum; and my friend from Ethiopia, a person who now works in “food service,” was once a speaker in the Upper House of her country’s Parliament. Unbelievable. I need to get out more.