Brunch Buddies…

On Sunday, I took one of my young Syrian refugee friends out for brunch in Beirut. Because of the war, he’s been stuck shining shoes the past few years instead of attending school. So whenever we spend time together, I try to teach him whatever I can about the world, and share photos with him from my far-flung travels. On Sunday, I told him about my travels in Mongolia–a country he had never heard of–and showed him photos of solitary yurts set on the country’s vast open steppe. An hour later into our conversation, when we were talking about Syria and what remains in his hometown, he said, “In Syria, everything has been flattened, and in my hometown there are no houses or buildings left–now it looks just like Mongolia.”