Meet 19-year-old Shorok, a Syrian refugee now living in Estonia, as she shows us around her new hometown.
Shorok Alsulaiman, 19, loves the Estonian sea. Originally from Syria, she explains that her home town was far from the ocean.
Shorok arrived in Estonia three years ago through UNHCR’s resettlement programme. At the time, Shorok and her family had stayed in Turkey for a period of three years after having been forced to flee Syria. They had never heard of Estonia.
“When I first came to Estonia, everything was difficult for me,” she explains. Shorok mentions the challenges of starting a new school, getting friends and starting over in a new country. Speaking in Estonian, Shorok shares that learning and speaking the language has been the key to becoming part of the community.
For World Refugee Day 2021, Shorok produced a video in which she guides the viewer through Tallinn’s Old Town, shows her school and shares her dream of one day studying to become a dentist.
To read more about Shorok’s experiences in Estonia, see the article Refugees speak at the Opinion Festival: “Estonians, let’s be friends!” from 2020.
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