I got to meet up with one of my international students over coffee today to see how her first few weeks of school have been. We chatted about her classes and how much different education in the United States is as compared to Brazil. She said Brazilians talk all the time and when a teacher asks for an answer, sometimes it is hard to get the students in Brazil to stop talking :)....Here, it is so quiet after a teacher asks a question...that cultural difference has shocked her. She told me some things about her life and it was so interesting because, for a couple years, she and her family had to seek asylum here in the U.S. Her dad had been a journalist in Brazil and had received a death threat which prompted their move. I asked her if she had felt fearful at that time...with the threat and needing to move to the United States for a few years. She said all she remembers was how excited she was that she might get to go to Disney World....she was 8 years old at the time :)
That made me smile...I mean she was only 8 years old, but still....she decided to look forward to something and, now, that is her most vivid memory from a traumatic time. I think kids can teach us a lot about looking forward to things. To them there is always something beautiful on the horizon.
If you saw a moving van outside your happy place would you freak out...or would you be excited about the adventure? What if, instead of looking for your happy place, you decided to be happy and to do your best to make others lives more enjoyable?
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