I was still green, the early days of marriage and the struggle of the unfamiliar dynamics of life as a foreigner shadowed my movements. I was meeting a foreign friend and another foreign lady for tea in a city where coffee was the beverage of choice. I remember it was one of those times a circle closes, you hear about someone from various sides and finally you get to see their face and sit and chat and confirm or dispel the bridges your mind has made between information snippets.

From what I’d heard I was sitting with a lady who could not truly feel comfortable with the language even after years of study and multiple learning approaches, still she and her husband were called to name this city their home, and that tension isolated her. She turned to me during conversation in a moment of mutual recognition for our situations and asked, in so many words,- “what should we do?” Her eyes looked deep at me, awaiting my opinion on squaring the circle and I opened my mouth far too swiftly. (more…)