After visiting Bonn for the DW Global Media Forum, I spent two days in Berlin with my friends. It had been almost exactly two years since I last saw them. It was a little bit like being back home.

I went back to the student housing unit I had lived in for a year and, suddenly, I stepped back into the conversations we used to have. I have missed them dearly. My friends stayed at the ECLA, and they are now moving into the fourth year of the BA program, in which they have to work on a project for a full year. Vira told me she is going to do her project on an artist who takes on the relationship between the capitalist market and art. We had good conversations about the creative process and the struggles we both have when facing it.

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I was having breakfast with my parents on Sunday. My mom is an English teacher, and she was grading papers. She asked me to take a look at some writing by her students.

“Do you think I’m being too demanding? This is for CAE [Cambridge English: Advanced] level,” she asked.

I pondered several things and exchanged ideas with her. It was during this conversation that I recalled how exactly I came to write in English as I do today.

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