Hannah lives in Kurdistan / Northern Iraq. Here, she describes the world from her own personal perspective.   

My name is Hannah, I am 16 years old. I am from Kurdistan and I live in Halabja. I am a student at high school and my school is a private school that we can learn three languages and they are (English, Turkish and Arabic). 

I wake up at seven o’clock every day and I eat breakfast at 7:15. The taxi comes at 7:35 and it takes me to school. At school after the students’ bell, all students should be in their classes and read the English or Turkish books for 15 minutes.  Then we start our lessons and we study 5 more lessons before the lunch break. The lunch break is my favourite time because its period is 50 minutes and we can do a lot of things. I usually chat with my friends and I sometimes do my homework or play basketball at the basketball stadium; it’s a really big stadium and we all love it. After lunch we have 2 more lessons. Then I come back home at 3:00 o’clock.

I love my country because we feel safe here and Kurdish people are really friendly and kind, so I’m proud of myself because I’m a Kurdish girl. I have 5 family members, one sister and one brother. My brother got married but my sister doesn’t get married yet because she’s a young girl. My parents are so encouraging, and they do their best for us so I try to do whatever I can do for them at least. I live with my family and we all live together, but not my brother with my sister in law because they have their own house in another city. My parents are employees. 

Kurdistan is not an independent country and it belongs to Iraq. Actually, Iraq is a tourist destination. But because the government of Kurdistan and Iraq are not together so Kurdistan is a really safe place.

Kurdistan is a big region which is located in four countries and they are (Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey). I live in the Iraqi part. Most of the Kurdish people have their extra house in the countryside in order to stay there on holidays. The countryside is usually full of mountains and its weather is usually warm in summer, cloudy in autumn, freezing in winter and cool in spring. Because in Kurdistan there’s unemployment, people try to get their occupation in the factories or companies. There are four main cities in Kurdistan and one of them is my city (Halabja). Halabja is a small city with a lot of nice scenery.

Most of the Kurdish people’s religion is Muslim and I am Muslim too. There are some other religions in Kurdistan except Islam, just like Christians and Jewish. They feel comfortable and safe in Kurdistan because the government cares about them as much as possible. My country in completely safe and out of any danger. About 5 years ago Daash has been in my country in order to kill non-muslim people, but all Muslims disagreed with them because in Islam we cannot hurt anybody without a particular and a proper reason and everybody is free to live his/her life with their opinion and religion 

My plan after school will be making my own institution just for English and teach all people in an academic way.

Editorial note: Hannah wrote an introduction, then answered questions from participants in other courses sent via me, to give her ideas to continue writing. For technical reasons, I rearranged the structure of the text as well as correcting minor mistakes, leaving the major ones as they are. The contents of her text have not been altered.