Today, I had my first "language exchange." It was with a Syrian engineering student and his buddy. They were nice and their English was miles (kilometers?) better than my Arabic (which consisted mainly of one-word replies). Among the questions I was asked, "Your wife, was she your girlfriend before you married?"*
And then the conversation moved to the recent visit of a "very important American politician here. You know Dennis Kucinich?"
It turns out Kucinich has been hanging in Damascus for the past few days. And the government newspaper has been running frontpage stories all week praising the sage opinions of "Senator Kucinich."
"He might be president, yes?" the engineer-friend asked me. "His is the Democrat's nominee. This is what I have heard."
I replied with a very gentle lesson in American politics, one that started with, "You have a better chance of being president...."
*In Syria, among all but our foreigner friends, Sara and I are married. Much easier that way.
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