Embassy Life: Friendship and Peace

This week, Francesca Andrews, Center Director, shares her thoughts on Embassy Life, and how the friendships created at Embassy English are leading to greater cultural understanding and respect among our global students. 

Each time a terrible war-like tragedy occurs in another country, I need to write a condolence email and offer of support to our students from the affected country.  I do it with a heavy heart hoping it will be the last time.  Last November it was an email to our French students.  Two weeks ago it was to our Turkish students.  This week it was to our Belgian students.

So on Tuesday March 22 at our regular Student Assembly, I decided to give a quick talk before the new students introduced themselves to the rest of the school.  I needed to speak about Brussels; I had to acknowledge it and how it affects us all.   I may have rambled a bit, but I found myself saying that at Embassy we love what we do because it is our own way of spreading peace by giving international students a chance to meet others from all over the world.

“This is the way we will create peace in the world, “ I said,  “Thank you for coming to Embassy to become a peacemaker.”   

Perhaps I’m just imagining that is what Embassy is about.   But guess what landed in my snail mail the very next day?  A package from Dagestan in Russia!  Inside was a long and lovely letter from Emara Bagataeva, former student from 2011, thanking us for everything and telling us she is now an English teacher!

She had assigned letter-writing to her students and when they balked and got bored, she decided to make it a real letter-writing assignment by sending the letters to us with hopes that our students would respond.  So the box contained not only Emara’s letter (and an assortment of Russian chocolates), but seven handwritten letters (with illustrations) from her young students.   The letters are wonderful.  But there was one letter with a drawing at the bottom of the page that caught my eye.  It was a picture of two arms outstretched with hands clasped in a handshake labeled “USA” and “Russia.”  Above the clasped hands was written:  “Friendship and Peace.”

Maybe we are in the business of peacemaking after all!

To learn more about becoming a student at Embassy English, contact us today!