A quote from my current read (God Grew Tired of Us, a memoir of the Lost Boys of Sudan, by John Bul Dau). Here's a passage where he describes his cultural orientation class as he was preparing to move from Kenya to Syracuse, New York:
"Then he said, "I will show you how cold it gets in American." He reached into a box and pulled out something that looked like a piece of glass, only rounded like a river rock.
"Feel this," he said, and he placed it in my hand. It felt so cold, yet it seemed to burn.
"Crush it," he said.
I tried to close my hand, but I could not crush it.
"That is water. It gets so cold in America that water sometimes turns hard. We call this an 'ice cube.' Feel it, and feel the cold in America."
I was amazed. How could people live in a land where water turned to stone?
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