{"id":911,"date":"2025-08-03T13:02:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T13:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/habibicenter.org\/layla-iraq\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T11:46:46","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T11:46:46","slug":"layla-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/habibicenter.org\/?p=911","title":{"rendered":"LAYLA (IRAQ)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignfull has-background has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image is-resized has-custom-border aligncenter size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/habibicenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Layla-1920.webp\" alt=\"Layla AUGUST 2016 TO DECEMBER 2017\" style=\"border-radius:50%;object-fit:cover;width:300px;height:300px\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center has-large-font-size\">LAYLA (IRAQ)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center has-medium-font-size\">AUGUST 2016 TO DECEMBER 2017<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">My name is Layla and I\u2019m from Iraq. Going to Habibi Center wasn\u2019t only an opportunity for me to learn English but also a place to get my mind off of everything I was going through at the time. I will never forget the time I spent with all the incredible people I met there.  It was another normal day of my life doing absolutely nothing, when a teacher (Toby) and one of my friends asked me if I wanted to go to school. I couldn\u2019t believe what I just heard to be honest. They said that I\u2019m gonna be taking English and Computer classes. I was excited to finally learn English so that I could communicate with people from different countries and help others translate. The first day of school, we\u2019re only two girls and the others were all boys. Each of us got a camera and we went to different places (restaurants, caf\u00e9s, streets, etc.) to take pictures. Then we got back to school and we were asked to make different facial expressions. I chose SAD because I was too shy to show my face and that way I could cover it. Then we took photos of each other and had fun scanning them.  The next day I started English classes and I had a feeling I was already improving. Weeks went by and more and more people joined the school, which made everything even more amazing than it already was. I would wake up every day and be eager to go to school and see all of my favourite people. I mean, isn\u2019t it everyone\u2019s dream to spend time with people they love while learning something super important? After some time there were more classes (Art, Math, German, Greek and German) If I didn\u2019t go to Habibi Center I wouldn\u2019t be able to help my family in any way, I mean I was living with my grandparents and they were sick almost all the time and someone needed to stay with them at the hospital to translate and of course that someone was me.  Despite the circumstances, the teachers encouraged me to learn for my Cambridge English exams. I\u2019m so beyond thankful that they paid for and prepared everything. I took it three times alongside my friends until I got to level B1. People always told me to stop learning English because they thought that I was gonna forget it anyways, but I never listened to any of that. When I got to Germany, I of course had a lot papers to do and I couldn\u2019t do any of that without the help of English. Even now (after two years of living in Germany) I speak English whenever people don\u2019t understand me.  I\u2019m grateful from the bottom of my heart for everything Habibi Center has helped me with until now. I really don\u2019t know how I would\u2019ve done this without everyone\u2019s help. My teacher (Stephanie) is the most amazing and inspiring person I\u2019ve ever met in my life. Whenever it comes to helping others she\u2019s the first to be there. One day I would like to be just like her.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LAYLA (IRAQ) AUGUST 2016 TO DECEMBER 2017 My name is Layla and I\u2019m from Iraq. Going to Habibi Center wasn\u2019t only an opportunity for me to learn English but also a place to get my mind off of everything I was going through at the time. I will never forget the time I spent with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-students"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/habibicenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Layla-1920.webp","author_info":{"display_name":"juliandeblock@gmail.com","author_link":"https:\/\/habibicenter.org\/?author=1"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>LAYLA (IRAQ) - Habibi Center<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/habibicenter.org\/?p=911\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LAYLA (IRAQ) - Habibi Center\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"LAYLA (IRAQ) AUGUST 2016 TO DECEMBER 2017 My name is Layla and I\u2019m from Iraq. 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