Catalina - CP #5

This is what it’s all about. On Thursday Hanan invited me to her home for lunch on Saturday and I felt so honored. I accepted to go and was picked up at around noon. We arrived at her house a bit later, and the lunch had been divided in two homes. Since she is neighbors with Bushra the men were to be at her house while all the women were at Hanan’s. Victoria, by the way, they live right beside you!! I immediately loved the sense of magic this created… it was a little secret world in there, where the women are free to do as they please, not scrutinized and in moving around a non-judgmental way. Both girls had their hair down and make-up on. We were joined during lunch with a Japanese classmate of theirs, their Indian neighbor and her daughter and, a little bit later, another Saudi friend. The lunch started with sweet coffee and an amazing cake Bushra brought. Then the lovely meal Hanan had made was spread out and we each served ourselves a bit of everything, including some Japanese dishes! Rice, bread, salads, chicken, stew… this was a feast! And we all sat on the floor to share it together. The conversation was amazing: lost in translation situations, non-verbal communication, traditions in out different countries, food and drinks, relationships, plans… Women being girls again, worries and dreams all coming together. This was it! Second language in all of its splendor! Thanks to English we came together, we were sharing with people and cultures we’d been brought up to mistrust and misunderstand. We were un-learning what we thought was right, what we thought was well done and wrong, rewriting our knowledge about what life is seeing it through other people’s eyes. After lunch came desert, more coffee, tea, Hanan’s beautiful child coming to hang out with us, dancing of all sorts of traditions, music and laughing. When I had to leave I felt like I was breaking away from a part of the world I had just discovered and I really want to keep belonging to. I think I am so fortunate to have encountered this. I never thought this was what I was getting when signing up for the CIES experience. I never thought I could run into something of the like. How to explain this to all the students we encounter struggling to learn? Hanan, Jia, Bushra, HunWoo, Emma, Tony, Alberto, Tatiana, Katia, Ernesto, everyone I have shared moments with and all of you, my classmates. I am so grateful to have met you! Jeeesh, I’m having a Sunday night moment. Sorry!