Day 279: Yemen

Monday evening means Language Exchange - Stockholm at the café. Tonight, three extra hosts showed up unexpectedly so there weren't all that many participants to go around. Half an hour into the meetup, I was ready to pack it in and go home when a latecomer walked through the door. I borrowed a participant from one group and together with the latecomer we constituted a small group and began conversing.

Turns out the latecomer, a woman in her thirties, moved to Sweden from Yemen about a year ago. When I asked her why, she replied that she was a political activist and found it confining to live in Yemen. During the course of the evening, we learned a great deal about Yemen, its political composition, the many problems it faces and the general geography of the region. It was refreshing and uplifting to meet a well-educated, intelligent and thoughtful person from the region who had deep insight into her country's problems and potential.

I learned as much current history from her as she learned Swedish from me. And I left feeling that I had gotten the better part of the bargain.