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A refugee is just someone seeking refuge. And a refuge is a place to survive.

I have come to respect the sacrifices refugees are making. To save their own lives they have willingly left so much of their comforts and traditions behind. They work to integrate their past into the present and must learn new traditions and languages in order to live in a better and safer place. They are remarkable.

A small part of me imagined what that kind of high-stakes limbo must feel like. I saw their faces waiting in forgotten spaces all over Paris. A lucky few had secured apartments, but they were also in limbo, not knowing if they would be reunited with loved ones or if they would be deported back to the unresolved violence in their home countries.

If you've ever wondered why those overloaded inflatable rafts coming to the shores of Greece seemed to be filled only with men (as I believe some US news outlets claimed), let me explain.

Not until recently did I realize others had views about the ocean diametrically opposed to mine — not until I met Zarrin, a refugee our NPO, Their Story Is Our Story, interviewed in Greece.

Job description: Travel required, sometimes illegally, usually at night, in the cold, when you are sick, scared or lost, or crammed so tightly in a vehicle that you can barely breathe.

“Know your cause. Know your vision. Nail it to your sternum and stride out there again and again and again” with Author Melissa Dalton-Bradford

Instead of a natural disaster like a fire, imagine you are attacked with bombs or threats by your own government or corrupt fellow citizens.

Their tone shifts the instant they get to the part about crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece. The part about WATER. Many of our refugee friends grew up in landlocked regions. Water activities are nowhere part of their culture. No one we have interviewed knew how to swim.

Since I started learning from refugees, I haven’t been able to travel (as I’m doing right now) without thinking of my refugee friends.