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The student body was pleasantly international. I was one of a couple of Canadians. The other was a long, curly haired guy from Manitoba named Miles. There were a handful of Americans, some west Africans, a few people from Mexico, an Italian, a Columbian, a surprising number of Ukranians, a Dutchman, a cluster of Indonesians, and a sunny young yoga teacher from India. Unlike Nepal, where many of my classmates were intensely focused undergrads and/or Buddhists, none of the students at SWUN were in academia and many were evangelical Christians. Most of the students were under 40.

In the earlier class with April, I made friends with a 30 something American named Turk. Turk was a Southern Baptist from St. Louis. He was beefy, blond and would have made, as my mother would put it, a good rugby player. One of the things we connected over was sports. Our teams were in the running for their respective league championships. He was rooting for the St. Louis Blues in the Stanley Cup Playoffs while I was cheering on the Toronto Raptors in the NBA playoffs. Beyond that, Turk and I chatted about religion and travelling through Asia.

Between classes, the students would stream into the common area. Many would take up at the ping pong tables to play rounds of ping pong. Turk was, like the American students I had met in Kathmandu, hyper competitive and played ping pong as if his life depended on it. Lively competitions often took shape and everyone joined in. Off to the side, students would sometimes play the stand-up piano that was slightly out of tune or lounge in the leather apholstered chairs nearby. Occasionally, if we were lucky, one of the Nigerian students would sit at the piano and improvise. He played for his church back home and effortlessly produced beautifully melodic, chord-driven riffs.