 One of the things I really liked about working as a volunteer in the ESL program is I learned so much from my two degrees students about their cultures and also gives me a chance to work with some younger people because usually they're a generation or two younger than me and I really like that. The student that I have is from Kurdistan, Iraq and came here as a doctoral student in urban planning which is my own field and so we really hit it off and we used our time together to talk about planning and that was a way to enter into our conversations and vocabulary building and reading and we would share articles and really became quite close over a variety of cultural differences that one might have thought we wouldn't have formed such a good relationship but that's been wonderful. It also feels like it's an opportunity to welcome people to our community and I really like that aspect and I think when people are here and they don't have strong English language skills it can be very isolating and so having someone they meet with regularly that they get to know and get comfortable with kind of helps bridge that initial isolation and kind of the unknown of why are people saying that or why are people doing that and I encourage them to ask me those kinds of questions and I think people should volunteer here because you form wonderful relationships with people from all over the world who would never meet or interact with other ways and people are so grateful for the opportunity to work with a native English speaker in a safe welcoming setting so it just feels good.