Here it is, the eve of this project’s beginning. After all the meetings to source a site/partner institution, pitch development, crowdfunding, collaboration with co-teachers, application gathering, site design and wrangling, and my very first visits to a high school lunch room since 2002.

I’m finalizing curricula and planning my outfit for tomorrow (shoes especially) and just sitting in incredible gratitude and a little bit of awe. In the end I have seven students from five countries, with amazing hair ranging from black to pink to blue. I’m a little nervous, and a lot excited, to see where this project takes us.

And I say us, because I’ll be doing each assignment alongside the girls. It feels important not to ask them to do anything I wouldn’t do myself – not to mention, the story of displacement and connection and making your home wherever it is that you find yourself is not one that’s foreign to me, either.

We’ve lived in so many nations; we carry so much history. It is a delight, and an enormous honor, to stand alongside these young women, and invite you to walk in my shoes.