Speaker 1: Good morning.
Speaker 2: It's Friday, and there's six more days of school. I'm up.
Speaker 2: It's about five forty five, and I really don't want
Speaker 2: to wake up because I didn't really sleep.
Speaker 1: Really great last night and probably didn't.
Speaker 3: Go to bed until one.
Speaker 2: I was in bed by like ten, but just couldn't sleep.
Speaker 2: And if I don't work out before work, it's just
Speaker 2: probably not going to happen. Yeah. If I don't do
Speaker 2: it now, I won't do it.
Speaker 4: This is finally a show about a former missionary who
Speaker 4: became a special type of middle school English teacher.
Speaker 5: My name is Stephanie Anderson, and I currently live in Indianapolis,
Speaker 5: So I'm an E and L teacher, which is English
Speaker 5: as a New Language. The school that I work at
Speaker 5: is about twelve hundred kids. The majority of students are
Speaker 5: African American. Most of my students are Hispanic, but then
Speaker 5: I also have a growing population of students coming from Haiti.
Speaker 4: I'll right a couple of announcements this morning. First, this
Speaker 4: is we are May eighteenth, or we are celebrating Haitian
Speaker 4: Flag Day today even though it falls on tomorrow. So
Speaker 4: at this time, all our Haitian Creole students are welcome
Speaker 4: to come down to the Commons to get a picture
Speaker 4: this morning and celebration of Haitian Flag Day tomorrow, So
Speaker 4: teachers you may release are Haitian creole students to the
Speaker 4: Commons at this time.
Speaker 5: ASL is kind of an outdated term. It's not something
Speaker 5: that's not used anymore, but it's something that is really
Speaker 5: kind of pigeonholes because it's English as a second language
Speaker 5: when it's ESL, and a lot of our students that
Speaker 5: are coming English is not their second language. For some
Speaker 5: of them, it is their second language. But for some
Speaker 5: of them, even if they're Hispanic, some of them are
Speaker 5: coming from places in Guatemala or Nicaragua or Honduras, and
Speaker 5: they have different languages, like more native languages, and for
Speaker 5: Haitian kids, English sometimes is their fifth language. So that's
Speaker 5: why the term has changed from ESL to English as
Speaker 5: a new Language. There's a lot of acronyms that do
Speaker 5: very similar things but have different purposes. Essentially, let's go, ladies,
Speaker 5: let's go, let's go, let's go.
Speaker 3: If you want a flag, I have some extra flags here.
Speaker 5: I was born in Indianapolis, and I was actually born
Speaker 5: during a tornado. I just had my birthday, not too
Speaker 5: long ago, and my mom reminded me that I was
Speaker 5: born during a tornado, and I haven't stopped since.
Speaker 3: I've never known a strange.
Speaker 5: When I was a child, my mom said that I
Speaker 5: would just talk to anybody and everyone, and I also
Speaker 5: got lost a lot. As a child, we went to
Speaker 5: Disney World. I don't know how old I was, maybe seven,
Speaker 5: and I remember looking down and they have all these
Speaker 5: bricks of people who who have donated money, and I'm
Speaker 5: looking and reading these names, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: like at the entrance, and then I look up and
Speaker 5: no one around me is someone I know. And then
Speaker 5: I think I just cried and found some kind of
Speaker 5: an adult, and then I found my parents. When we
Speaker 5: went to King's Island and in Ohio, I got lost
Speaker 5: there with my cousins. I got lost out a seers once,
Speaker 5: and my family members all had to block off the
Speaker 5: seers because they thought maybe I'd gotten kidnapped. But I
Speaker 5: was just hiding in a rack of clothes.
Speaker 3: I wander off.
Speaker 5: And I look at something, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: I look around and I'm not with my people.
Speaker 3: So I'm not.
Speaker 5: Always very observant of staying with the people I'm supposed
Speaker 5: to stay with. I stayed in Indianapolis for my whole
Speaker 5: childhood and high school career. Moved to Munts, Indiana to
Speaker 5: winter Baal State did not do education. I actually did
Speaker 5: religious studies, and that was more of a I procrastinated
Speaker 5: picking a major for so long that once I got
Speaker 5: finished and I looked, you know, I was getting closer
Speaker 5: to graduating, I had to look back and be like, well,
Speaker 5: what have I taken a lot of courses in?
Speaker 3: And I had taken a lot of history, a lot
Speaker 3: of geography.
Speaker 5: And then a lot of religion classes, and because it
Speaker 5: was interesting to me, well, religion in general. Like at
Speaker 5: that time, at late high school early college, was just
Speaker 5: trying to figure out who I was as a person
Speaker 5: and trying to figure out, like how do I fit
Speaker 5: in this whole world. I wasn't a Christian. We didn't
Speaker 5: go to church. That was something that I did on
Speaker 5: my own. And I had a cousin that an older
Speaker 5: cousin that asked me to go to church, and I was.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, yeah, I'll go. You're cool.
Speaker 5: I was a freshman in high school when nine to
Speaker 5: eleven happened, and I remember just being baffled by, you know,
Speaker 5: that happening, not knowing anything about Islam, not knowing anything
Speaker 5: about that part of the world, but being very intrigued
Speaker 5: by what had happened, and thinking, I think I'm also
Speaker 5: very an optimistic person, and thinking, there's no way that
Speaker 5: there's a group of people like that, there's a giant
Speaker 5: group of people in the world to just like hate
Speaker 5: Americans so much that they would do something like this.
Speaker 5: And at the time, I was a very strong Christian
Speaker 5: and so I was just trying to think, how, like,
Speaker 5: what did they believe? Well, how is it so different
Speaker 5: than the way that I believe? And so I think
Speaker 5: that's what kind of drew me to religion to begin with.
Speaker 5: And Islam always was a focal point when I was studying.
Speaker 5: I always was intrigued by Islam over everything else. When
Speaker 5: I had to do I took a religious studies clash
Speaker 5: that studied it was like an anthropological study of a
Speaker 5: group in Muncie, and you've got to choose any religious
Speaker 5: group you wanted, and I chose our local mosque and
Speaker 5: I loved going. I went every Friday. I met these
Speaker 5: amazing women. Because I stayed on the women's side, I
Speaker 5: met these amazing women from Itran in Afghanistan and got
Speaker 5: to know them. They invited me over to their house.
Speaker 5: I never felt like they were pushing me to try
Speaker 5: to believe in Hamm it is their profit. Like they
Speaker 5: never tried to convert me, and they made me feel
Speaker 5: I mean, they knew that I was doing this for school.
Speaker 5: They knew that it wasn't now I think would they
Speaker 5: have been happy to share with me if I would
Speaker 5: have asked in an interest that I wanted to become Muslim, Yeah,
Speaker 5: of course.
Speaker 3: But they were really respect that.
Speaker 5: Boundary, which I appreciated as if do you want to
Speaker 5: read it with me?
Speaker 3: That's okay.
Speaker 5: So this blue box at sixty two, Okay, more good
Speaker 5: news was brought. More good news news was brought by
Speaker 5: young Jock. By Young j There was a time in
Speaker 5: my life that I wanted to be a missionary, and
Speaker 5: I think that was the other interest that came into
Speaker 5: trying to understand about other people. I wanted to see
Speaker 5: what do other people do and how do they live?
Speaker 5: And I fully and wholeheartedly believed that it was my
Speaker 5: job as a Christian at that time to proselytize and
Speaker 5: to convert people to Christianity, because I felt it was
Speaker 5: partly my duty because it was asked of me of
Speaker 5: the Bible, and I believed at that point that the
Speaker 5: Bible was the true and accurate word. I think that
Speaker 5: was kind of the like there was little sparks here
Speaker 5: and there of just peaking interest of just something different,
Speaker 5: something new than what I had known in Indiana. I
Speaker 5: never thought that.
Speaker 3: I would stay in Indiana forever.
Speaker 5: I guess I never really saw that as a long
Speaker 5: term plan. I always saw that there was other places
Speaker 5: out in the world and thought, man, it would be
Speaker 5: really cool to see what it's like to be there.
Speaker 5: My mom had a friend that she hooked me up
Speaker 5: with their church was going to Honduras for a week,
Speaker 5: and so I went with them. I didn't know anybody
Speaker 5: really in this group. I mean, they were really friendly,
Speaker 5: and we went to compound that had a school, and
Speaker 5: they had like a communal area for all the families
Speaker 5: to cook, and then all of the families had individual houses,
Speaker 5: but all of the parents were like foster parents or
Speaker 5: like adoptive parents, they were not the parents of the children,
Speaker 5: and so they all lived there and then they went
Speaker 5: to school there, and then while we were there, they
Speaker 5: were also working on a college, like a small university
Speaker 5: up on the mountain. I ended up helping this guy
Speaker 5: do pipework every day. I didn't know what I was doing,
Speaker 5: but I hung out with the kids and kept them
Speaker 5: occupied while other people were doing real work. So that
Speaker 5: was my first time leaving the country really feeling like
Speaker 5: I was leaving the country by myself. And then when
Speaker 5: I was in college, I got connected with a Christian
Speaker 5: organization and I did mission work in the summers. I
Speaker 5: went to India first summer and that was my first
Speaker 5: like really really big trip. The next summer I went
Speaker 5: to Thailand. And then I graduated college and somehow got
Speaker 5: connected with a friend of a friend who ran a
Speaker 5: Christian school in Nigeria and they said, hey, we have
Speaker 5: this library that the school that needs someone to run
Speaker 5: it for three months. Would you be interested? I said, yeah,
Speaker 5: I could go. I'll go to Nigeria for three months.
Speaker 5: I don't have anything to do. And so I talked
Speaker 5: to the principal and she's like, actually, we would want
Speaker 5: you for a year, a whole school year.
Speaker 3: And that was a huge culture shock.
Speaker 5: That was that was probably the best thing to do first,
Speaker 5: like a first big experience living abroad because it just
Speaker 5: taught me so much. It taught me how to live
Speaker 5: on less than I've ever been used to. I don't
Speaker 5: want to say a little, because we were very blessed
Speaker 5: compared to a lot of people that lived there. I mean,
Speaker 5: we had a generator in our property so at night,
Speaker 5: like we would have a generator for our air conditioning.
Speaker 3: But the electricity was very unstable.
Speaker 5: It was never you know, it was always on and off,
Speaker 5: and you just got used to it. Our water would
Speaker 5: be the well liked would run dry and we just
Speaker 5: wouldn't have water to wash dishes and things. Yeah, when
Speaker 5: you don't have water, you don't electricity, You've got to
Speaker 5: figure out how to make all of your food. There's
Speaker 5: definitely perspective in that. When I was working with people
Speaker 5: and trying to proselytize them and get to them to to,
Speaker 5: you know, believe in Jesus and become saved. I think
Speaker 5: at that time I really felt like I was doing
Speaker 5: something that was going to make a.
Speaker 3: Forever impact on their life.
Speaker 5: And I was sad for people, I think, thinking that
Speaker 5: they didn't they didn't have Jesus the same way that
Speaker 5: I had them, and they didn't have that same security,
Speaker 5: because that's what you're taught, and that's what you know,
Speaker 5: preachers say every Sunday, and that's what you read about
Speaker 5: in the Bible, is that you don't have that they
Speaker 5: don't have that security, and that they are going to
Speaker 5: live forever in you know, in hell or just in
Speaker 5: you know, in this discomfort, and you don't want that
Speaker 5: for anybody. And so I think I felt secure for
Speaker 5: a while, but I think still deep down I had
Speaker 5: this feeling of do I actually believe enough?
Speaker 3: Am I doing this right? Is it enough?
Speaker 5: And I think that in Christianity, I think everyone, I
Speaker 5: think in any faith, people are going to doubt their faith,
Speaker 5: and everyone's going to.
Speaker 3: Go back and forth.
Speaker 5: And I doubt there's anybody in their life that's ever said, oh,
Speaker 5: I believed in this once and I believed it forever
Speaker 5: and I never doubted. But I think traveling and seeing
Speaker 5: more people and different people and meeting again people that
Speaker 5: were some of the nicest people, like, the longer that
Speaker 5: I saw this, the more that I saw this, the
Speaker 5: more that I lived, I just thought, I just can't
Speaker 5: imagine that they are living their life and they just
Speaker 5: happened to be born somewhere that Christianity is not prevalent,
Speaker 5: and I just can't imagine that that's going to be
Speaker 5: the end of them because they don't believe because of this,
Speaker 5: because they're just not born in the right place. And
Speaker 5: so you know, quickly when you start to meet more
Speaker 5: people of different religions and different faiths and see how
Speaker 5: they express their faiths, and you just it becomes harder
Speaker 5: to believe that there's only one way. It's harder to
Speaker 5: believe that there's only one route. I don't know, even
Speaker 5: after all of this, after studying many religions and seeing
Speaker 5: many religions in practice, I don't really know if I
Speaker 5: believe really anything anymore. After I'd worked in Nigeria and
Speaker 5: worked at a school, I realized, Okay, if I'm going
Speaker 5: to go back overseas and work overseas again, teaching English
Speaker 5: is probably my best bet.
Speaker 3: Like I'm not.
Speaker 5: Nobody needs a religious studies major there in their workforce.
Speaker 5: I could have went anywhere, but I was very drawn
Speaker 5: to going back to Africa and to an Arab you know,
Speaker 5: an Arab country there where.
Speaker 3: They spoke Arabic.
Speaker 5: I decided Egypt because one I found a job and
Speaker 5: two I was like, well, this fits both criterias. It's
Speaker 5: in Africa and it's an Arabic speaking country and their
Speaker 5: Muslim like let's go. Because I had read stories about
Speaker 5: women being in Saudi Arabia and I had, you know,
Speaker 5: heard all of these things, and I'm thinking it, can't
Speaker 5: you hear about these stereotypes about women being oppressed And
Speaker 5: I'm like, it can't be as bad as you're hearing,
Speaker 5: And so I wanted to see for myself and it
Speaker 5: wasn't what you know, we and the West had kind
Speaker 5: of exacerbated. So then I found I found a job
Speaker 5: online for a school in Egypt. I didn't know much
Speaker 5: about Egypt, I'll be really honest, and the website, like
Speaker 5: even every part of it seemed a little sketchy. My
Speaker 5: mom doesn't know a lot of this that it was
Speaker 5: the sketchy. I did communicate with people that had worked
Speaker 5: at the school, other English teachers, but I still was
Speaker 5: like there was just weird things where they were like
Speaker 5: telling me about like how you should get your alcohol
Speaker 5: from duty free because it's way more expensive, you know,
Speaker 5: when you buy it outside of duty free. And I
Speaker 5: start like thinking and I'm like, am I getting kidnapped,
Speaker 5: but then I'm also bringing the alcohol for everyone, like,
Speaker 5: what's what's happening? So it ended up being fine, and
Speaker 5: I ended up, you know, meeting and working with people
Speaker 5: that I from all over the United States, Canada, Australia,
Speaker 5: New Zealand and the UK, and people that I would
Speaker 5: have never met or you know, probably been friends with
Speaker 5: it and became really good friends with them.
Speaker 3: So and then I got in a.
Speaker 5: Relationship with a guy and we had talked about getting married,
Speaker 5: but he was Muslim, and I think it was I
Speaker 5: think I knew deep down it was never really going
Speaker 5: to happen because his family was never going to agree.
Speaker 5: They never were going to be okay with it was
Speaker 5: too different than what they had ever experienced. That I
Speaker 5: was one American that I was. I too didn't speak
Speaker 5: Arabic and you know, I was working on it, but
Speaker 5: I wasn't anywhere close to fluent and I wasn't Muslim.
Speaker 3: But I think we both hoped.
Speaker 5: So that was that was at That was a hard
Speaker 5: blow when that ended, when he and I broke up.
Speaker 3: We ended in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 5: It feels it feels really close sometimes, but then it
Speaker 5: feels really far when I when I say the date
Speaker 5: out loud and I think about the time that has passed,
Speaker 5: and I think about the things I've done since, then
Speaker 5: I think, oh, no, that's that's actually kind of not
Speaker 5: that close, but it still feels fresh sometimes. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: my mental health went downhill, well partially because of that.
Speaker 5: Partially I rushed into another relationship with someone who was
Speaker 5: wrong for me. But you know, you tried to fill
Speaker 5: I tried to fill avoid quickly and that was wrong
Speaker 5: for me. And then when that didn't pan out, I
Speaker 5: just was crushed. I came back to the United States
Speaker 5: essentially because my mental health was trash and needed to
Speaker 5: be around my family.
Speaker 3: And then when I.
Speaker 5: Was looking for a job, I had found this job
Speaker 5: for E and L, but I didn't really know what
Speaker 5: EnL was and didn't even realize that I had to
Speaker 5: do a whole nother certification for it, so I kind
Speaker 5: of fell into the job. But when I looked at
Speaker 5: the description and you're teaching students English, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 5: I've been teaching kids English forever, like for seven years,
Speaker 5: and all my kids that I taught abroad didn't know
Speaker 5: English as their first language.
Speaker 3: I was like, I can do that, and when I.
Speaker 5: Got interviewed here in Indiana, I think my principal had reservations,
Speaker 5: but I told them, and this was kind of my
Speaker 5: motto through and through is that like kids are kids
Speaker 5: are kids. At the end of the day, I don't
Speaker 5: care what kid in the world you're talking to, Like
Speaker 5: they like candy. Any kid in the world likes candy.
Speaker 5: Any kid in the world wants to play and do
Speaker 5: silly things and have fun. Like at the end of
Speaker 5: the day, kids are kids are kids, and they have
Speaker 5: basic needs, which are they want to have fun, they
Speaker 5: want to feel safe, they want candy, and they grow fast.
Speaker 5: I mean, those are those are kind of the universal
Speaker 5: truths for children. So during my day, I have a
Speaker 5: little period in the beginning of the class, like at
Speaker 5: the beginning of the day that I don't have students,
Speaker 5: So that's the first period, and then I have the
Speaker 5: second period. I have my Reading Intervention class, which is
Speaker 5: seven to eighth graders that are proficient in English but
Speaker 5: just need some help with some reading. And then I
Speaker 5: have my eighth grade New Learner class, and then I
Speaker 5: have a seventh grade new learner class. Then I have lunch,
Speaker 5: and then after that I work with a student that
Speaker 5: is new to the United States who is not literate
Speaker 5: at all, and she's a fifth grader. So we work
Speaker 5: on a lot of basic skills, and then I work
Speaker 5: with my sixth grade new learners then and they've all
Speaker 5: just gotten here this year. Those students that I work
Speaker 5: with from Haiti that I support in that class Wahn.
Speaker 5: I use Google Translate a lot, especially with my Haitian students.
Speaker 5: Spanish I can kind of fumble through here and there,
Speaker 5: but with my Haitian students, I'm also trying to learn
Speaker 5: Haitian creole on Duelingo and it's not I started French
Speaker 5: and then I started Haitian Creole, and there was weird
Speaker 5: overlaps that didn't make sense because like God song was
Speaker 5: like boy in French, but then it was Man and
Speaker 5: Haitian creole on due Lingo at least, and so then
Speaker 5: I was like, I don't know which is which. Now
Speaker 5: you have to understand the crossover. I think that's the
Speaker 5: biggest thing in linguistics and in the job that I have,
Speaker 5: the crossover meaning one language to another. So how does
Speaker 5: English compare to this other language? So like Hungarian, for example,
Speaker 5: is very different than English, and a lot of other
Speaker 5: languages because the structure is not a subject verb pattern,
Speaker 5: it's actually a verb subject. So like Yoda actually speaks
Speaker 5: more like he's Hungarian. They actually copied the Hungarian structure,
Speaker 5: like sentence structure, and so that's why he talks the
Speaker 5: way he does. Talented him I And so you have
Speaker 5: to understand that crossover so that you can understand what
Speaker 5: are they going to make mistakes in Spanish and englisher
Speaker 5: are nice? Are nice like accompaniment because we have so
Speaker 5: many similarities. But like they have to understand, phonics is different,
Speaker 5: so like the J is going to be different. Arabic
Speaker 5: is like that Arabic there's no P sound, so pepsi
Speaker 5: is bibsi. They don't have a V sound, so everything
Speaker 5: goes to like a puugh. They have the i'm sound
Speaker 5: that we don't have. They have the so like uh
Speaker 5: like DJ Colled like DJ Colled. I don't know why
Speaker 5: this drives me crazy, Maybe just because you get used
Speaker 5: to it after a while. Like I had a friend,
Speaker 5: I have a friend named Khalid in Quit and then
Speaker 5: I asked him one day, I said, why does DJ
Speaker 5: Colled go by DJ Collid and not DJ Khalid?
Speaker 3: Because it should be like A like.
Speaker 5: A and and and I think realistically it's just because
Speaker 5: English speakers are never going to say it correctly, so
Speaker 5: I think at some point he's just like, forget it.
Speaker 5: I'm DJ Colled, DJ Chali. So the highs of being
Speaker 5: an an L teacher is just watching them develop and
Speaker 5: you see them and this was the same even when
Speaker 5: I taught abroad and watching them just grow. And the
Speaker 5: funniest thing is you start to realize that you've really
Speaker 5: taught them and that they're really paying attention and they're
Speaker 5: learning something when they start picking up your mannerisms and
Speaker 5: the way that you talk or the things that you say,
Speaker 5: and then you go, oh, you have been listening to me.
Speaker 5: This is from me, Like I call them honey a lot,
Speaker 5: and then I have to quickly tell them once like
Speaker 5: what this means, and they just look at me funny,
Speaker 5: and then I have to be like, yeah, it's just
Speaker 5: like a like it's like a more, it's like a
Speaker 5: sweet thing. It's endearment. But then they'll start saying it
Speaker 5: back to me sometimes and sometimes it's sarcastic. It's like okay, honey,
Speaker 5: and then you're like, oh, okay, yeah, you guys are
Speaker 5: are actually learning things. The lows are the stories. I
Speaker 5: don't hear a ton of them one because of a
Speaker 5: language barrier too.
Speaker 3: I try not to.
Speaker 5: Put my kids in positions where they talk about things
Speaker 5: they don't want to talk about.
Speaker 3: Or also a lot of our kids that.
Speaker 5: Come with some crazy stories don't even know that it's
Speaker 5: trauma or that it's a crazy story.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: One of my teachers I teach with was talking to
Speaker 5: a girl a couple of years ago, and the girl
Speaker 5: says something like, well, you guys were all kidnapped too,
Speaker 5: weren't you. And they're like and they all kind of
Speaker 5: look at her, like what, And you know, when she
Speaker 5: was she came from Guatemala originally, when they got to
Speaker 5: the US border, her mom was here in the United
Speaker 5: States but had had, you know, paid people to bring
Speaker 5: the daughters here, and then once they got to the border,
Speaker 5: then these people asked for more money. And you just
Speaker 5: hope and pray that it was just that they were
Speaker 5: kept there. You just you just you just hope. And
Speaker 5: that's something I've tried to advocate a lot, and I'm
Speaker 5: we're starting to see change in that. But I want
Speaker 5: to see when my kids come. I want to see them,
Speaker 5: you know, start talking to an adult that they can
Speaker 5: talk to in their language. That's a counselor. And I'm
Speaker 5: not saying draw things out, but just check in with
Speaker 5: our kids and see like, are you okay? Because they
Speaker 5: don't even realize sometimes. So it's things like that. Those
Speaker 5: are the lows. Those are definitely the lows. It's the
Speaker 5: stories they come with. Those are the lows.
Speaker 3: But it makes them.
Speaker 5: Who they are, and it's their story, and you know,
Speaker 5: you don't want to take it from them, and you're
Speaker 5: not gonna try to demean it or and you don't
Speaker 5: want to. I'm not trying to use their stories of like,
Speaker 5: oh woe is me and my poor kids, like that's
Speaker 5: not it at all. I know that my kids' parents
Speaker 5: are coming here because they they want more for their kids.
Speaker 4: At this time, please release call writers and anyone staying
Speaker 4: for an after school activity. A bus riders remain in
Speaker 4: the classroom until four o'clock.
Speaker 5: The I don't have great feelings about people that are
Speaker 5: very negative about immigrants, especially knowing how hard my kids'
Speaker 5: parents work. I don't ask about their status. I don't
Speaker 5: want to know their status. I don't want to get
Speaker 5: involved in. Now, if a kid told me and wanted
Speaker 5: helped with something like they need a lawyer or something, now,
Speaker 5: of course I would do whatever I could to connect them.
Speaker 5: But I know how difficult potentially their lives were, just
Speaker 5: hearing little bits and pieces of their stories, and you know,
Speaker 5: I have students that were on the brink of getting
Speaker 5: involved in gangs or were involved in gangs in other
Speaker 5: countries in Central or South America, and their parents, you know,
Speaker 5: are trying to get them out of it.
Speaker 3: I know that.
Speaker 5: And I just think I think even just looking back
Speaker 5: on the history of our country and that we were
Speaker 5: all immigrants at some point. I mean, we were all
Speaker 5: we didn't all start here, and I think America has
Speaker 5: a lot of we have a lot of dark history
Speaker 5: for sure, And I don't know, it just makes me
Speaker 5: sad sometimes when I see people, you know, being like
Speaker 5: this is I think, at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: it all roots to the unknown, and you know, propaganda
Speaker 5: starts and you hear this negative thing and that negative thing.
Speaker 5: It's the fear of the unknown, for sure, and I
Speaker 5: think a lot of Americans struggle with the fear of
Speaker 5: the unknown, which is why when people talk to me
Speaker 5: and find out I've lived abroad or I've done this,
Speaker 5: they think some people think I'm crazy. They're like, how
Speaker 5: could you ever leave the United States and not only leave,
Speaker 5: but how could you live there? But again, it all
Speaker 5: goes back to kids or kids or kids, people or
Speaker 5: people or people. I can meet somebody that's in rural Indiana,
Speaker 5: and I can meet somebody that's a Beduin in the
Speaker 5: Sinai Peninsul of Egypt, and I can be like, you
Speaker 5: guys would be best friends if you were born in
Speaker 5: the same place, because you guys do the same things.
Speaker 5: You're all just doing hillbilly stuff and riding around, getting
Speaker 5: into trouble, shooting, you know, playing with fire. You're all
Speaker 5: doing the same things. Like you're just so I don't know.
Speaker 5: I see a lot of parallels between people when I travel,
Speaker 5: and I think, I think the running towards the scary
Speaker 5: thing has just been my typical life cycle. It's a
Speaker 5: I don't know if it's a dumb that I just
Speaker 5: run into fear. I don't know if it's just that
Speaker 5: that's just been my nature that I I don't I
Speaker 5: think it was the especially I think as a younger person,
Speaker 5: I think you have a lot of these feelings of
Speaker 5: I'm never gonna die, I'm going to live forever, and
Speaker 5: I think I ran with that for so long, and
Speaker 5: so I lived in, you know, probably a dreamland a
Speaker 5: little bit here and there. And when you're in a dreamland,
Speaker 5: like you can do whatever you want, you can fly.
Speaker 3: Well, it's about almost eleven o'clock at night.
Speaker 1: I just got home about thirty minutes or so. Ago
Speaker 1: went and hung out with some teacher friends in one
Speaker 1: of their houses and had some drinks and pizza and
Speaker 1: just kind of hung out. Sometimes we talk about school,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times we just kind of like
Speaker 1: hang out and do other things and talk about other things.
Speaker 6: And I'm getting ready to wash my face and brush
Speaker 6: my teeth and go to bed and hopefully wake up
Speaker 6: and do CrossFit in the morning if I can wake up. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and then next week will be our last week, and
Speaker 6: then I have like nine weeks off, which is well, no,
Speaker 6: not nine weeks. I don't know how many weeks we
Speaker 6: have off.
Speaker 2: I don't remember.
Speaker 1: I think we have about like June part of July,
Speaker 1: so about two months, and then we'll start back up
Speaker 1: and do it all again.