More fun with LISEL

I was happy to find friends, old and new, again at LISEL this past Friday. It seems like our numbers keep growing each week! We were grateful to have a Bulgarian friend, Kristina, cook Moussaka for us and then blow us away with her singing talent! I will try to post the video so that you can hear her Bulgarian folk song if the file isn't too large. I told her that I would buy her CD if she made one!

We also spent the evening discussing current world problems in smaller groups in order to present the issue to everyone at the end of the night as "journalists". It was interesting to hear the views of friends from all over on immigration, particularly from the many friends I have made from Senegal and Cameroon who study here and some of whom hope to eventually immigrate to the United States. One friend's view was that each person has a responsability to return to his home country in order to use the skills that he gains from his studies abroad to help the development of his country. The prevailing trend unfortunately is that the country loses its most talented people and a proportion of its population to other countries which offer higher salaries and more security, but one has to concede that it's hard to blame people for immigrating when their home country might not offer the same level of political and economic stability. Others took this second tack, sharing the opinion that the individual needs to make the most of his opportunities, even if it means losing part of his culture and close contact with family to immigrate. Immigration is a rather important issue here since about half of the resident population of the city consists of foreigners and immigrants- I hear people speaking Portuguese on the bus almost as much as I hear Luxembourgish. I wonder how this will affect the culture of Luxembourg in the future , but then again, it can be argued that all of history is a story of immigration and that cultures are always in evolution.

I ended up discussing the Arab-Israeli conflict with a friend from Algeria- that was an interesting conversation! Due to disagreement on the historicity of certain facts- some of which after a bit more research I have found are still being debated by scholars, such as the origin of the Philistine people who moved into the area at approximately the same time period as the Israeli tribes- we ended up agreeing to disagree. We had fun presenting the issue in playing extremists from both sides, though I'm not sure that I did justice since I'm not absolutely sure of the viewpoint of the far right in Israel. Whatever the case, I am always grateful to gain exposure to more of the world and to other perspectives!