Many Americans think that all Muslims have to wear the head scarf, hijab. They also think that we must wear really conservative clothing. In fact, many of our friends don't believe we are Muslim because we don't follow those rules. They don't realize that how a girl dresses depends on her cultural traditions and her family. People also think that the genocide is happening throughout Sudan. They think that there is fighting everywhere. However, most of the fighting is confined to the south and west. In the capital city of Khartoum, which is where we are from, people don't really have much of an idea of what life is like for people in the other parts of Sudan.
Before we came to the U.S., we had seen American movies and television shows. We expected the whole country to be like New York City. We thought we would be living in tall skyscrapers. We were so surprised to see that we actually had a lawn with green grass! The houses here also looked like cartoon houses to us. We'd never seen houses with pitched roofs before, since most of the roofs in Sudan are flat.
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