Posts

Showing posts from September, 2012

We owe One Direction

Image
It's been just over two years since we moved from Mostar to Jajce. Mostar is not short of internationals living there; there are governmental agencies, non-governmental agencies and the United World College that between them draw people from the four corners of the globe. Jajce is different. There are very few foreigners who live in the town and while many of the young people we work with seem to have cousins or aunts or uncles scattered across Europe, or in the States, we found ourselves with a lot of explaining to do. “Where are you from?” “England.” What's that?” is, believe it or not, an accurate translation of an early conversation. At least one young person was convinced London and America were basically the same thing. Another stated categorically that soon the US would be part of Europe, because eventually everyone was going to be part of Europe. This had to be true: their teacher had told them! But all this happened before One Direction. In the last year they hav