heard

A quick snippet in the middle of one busy workday of one jam-packed week: a “this is why I’m here” moment. A crew of filmmakers was at the school today, and my library aid was one of the students they decided to feature. So during the period of the day in which I have her in the library, I got to witness her being filmed in her work and interviewed. To see a young woman who is so very intelligent, and so very diligent, able to make her voice heard here, from this country, to go out to the world, it was a beautiful thing. Maybe washing library books is not the most glamorous sort of thing one could be filmed doing, but she was eloquent as she explained it to them. “I don’t know what other libraries do,” she began. “I’m sure they all have some way of cleaning books too. But here we have even more dust, so I just wash them all when they come in. With Windex.” She smiled. And I smiled with her. Then they moved on to less mundane topics such as her career goals and life dreams. And I thought about how much I admire this young woman, and how I hope to help the voice of other third culture kids, like she is, to be heard, clear and strong.
This photo is one I snapped last week, as she was working on an art project. She happens to be a talented artist as well as a fine washer-of books :-)