The first day of German class.
This post is not about how difficult the language is or how you can survive with only a handful of words. It is about the people who showed up.
There are about fifteen, aged between their late teens and their late forties. A third or so are Turkish, then there is a host of other Western Europeans, from the young Italian male with slicked back hair to the woman from Iceland.
There is the Ethiopian mother of two who arrived a few months ago from Saudi Arabia with her German husband and two kids. There is the father from Egypt who was forbidden by his pregnant wife to demonstrate on Tahrir Square against the regime of Mubarak; she feared for his safety.
There is the older Chechen man who befriends the Italian within the first hour of class.
And there are two Americans, one a middle aged woman married to a German, the other a male in his twenties.
It turns out, the young man has a German passport but does not speak any German. Having been whisked away as a baby, he grew up in New Mexico.
The teacher is a round, grey-haired German. He has lived all over the world, mostly in South America, teaching German.
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