"Oh Lord! She's gonna come back a terrorist!"
Sadly enough, that was the No. 1 response I got from people in my hometown last spring when I told them I would be spending my summer in the Middle East. "Why!?! They don't like Americans over there," was a close second. Thankfully, my parents, who are both language teachers, were stoked that I wanted to travel to Jordan to study Arabic intensively for eight weeks with the U.Va.-Yarmouk University Summer Arabic Program.
I started taking Arabic on a whim my first year and found it curiously enjoyable, yet immensely challenging. My dad, a Japanese professor, had always told me the absolute best way to improve your language skills is to be completely immersed. I spent my summer discovering just that and more.
Stepping off of the airplane at Queen Alia Airport in Amman, Jordan, there was something simultaneously exhilarating and unsettling about being that far away from home with 31 other students, 26 of whom I'd met just under 24 hours earlier. We had been repeatedly warned about the impending culture shock, and I was worried to see how I would deal with it all. But within a few days, we were settled in and living our new lives as foreigners.
Don't get me wrong, the first days were difficult: the language barrier, the oppressive summer sun, the clothing restrictions and my new position as a foreign woman in the Middle East. But we quickly adjusted with the help of the staff at the university, and more generally, the Jordanian people. Throughout my stay, I was constantly in awe. The people in Irbid, where our university was located, were among the kindest and most helpful people I had ever met. They would go out of their way to help the lost American students who they saw wandering aimlessly down the street or struggling, in broken Arabic, just to buy a few pieces of fruit.
While we were there to study, my experience went far beyond the door of our small and un-air-conditioned classroom. Amidst the reminders of our director-in-residence that "this is an intensive program," we were able to venture out to explore and experience Jordanian society and culture.
Every weekend was a fresh chance to visit new places and meet new people. The breathtaking views from Umm Qais and Mt. Nebo, the clear blue water at the beaches in Aqaba, the salty water at the Dead Sea, the Roman ruins at Jerash and the awe-inspiring hidden city of Petra were just a few of the places I visited.
But one of my most memorable experiences was my trip to Syria. Not really sure what to expect, two fellow Hoos and I left Amman for Damascus in a service taxi. Driving along the highway in our 1970s model Chrysler Coronet, I kept thinking about Syria's image in the American media. Labeled as part of Bush's "Axis of Evil," Syria is largely seen as a shady terrorist training ground with connections to Iran and ties to Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, all of which are labeled terrorist groups by the U.S. government. While I don't want to get into a discussion of Syria's role in the war on terrorism, I do know one thing: We have to remember that the Syrian government and its actions cannot be the only things upon which we base our judgments. Walking through the Hamidiye Souq, the huge old-style marketplace in the old city of Damascus, or the courtyard of the great Umayyad Mosque, it is hard to imagine any of the people there doing anything to harm another human being.
All of the people we encountered during our stay were warm and gracious, welcoming us to their country with open arms. I never felt the virulent anti-American sentiment so many people had warned me about. While the Syrians we met were not very fond of our leader, they were very quick to differentiate between the people of America and its government. Many people's comments went something like this: "You from America? President Bush, bad. But America? Good! People from America? Good!"
Many of the shopkeepers and waiters were delighted and entertained when we would try to use our painfully formal mix of Modern Standard Arabic and Jordanian dialect. They would help us with our vocabulary and bluntly explain to us that nobody actually uses many of the words we had learned throughout our Arabic careers.
On our third day in Syria, we were at the service taxi station in Aleppo trying to find a reasonable fare back to Damascus when we realized we would be a few hours late for check-in time at our hotel there. One of the girls with me had invested in a cell phone early in the trip, and we could not for the life of us figure out how the phone numbers in Syria worked. Within a few minutes, we had a crowd of about 15 service taxi drivers, half of them with their own cell phones out and dialing around us, trying to help us contact our hotel. Eventually one of them was successful, and in our broken Arabic, we explained our situation to the hotel employee, thanked all of the drivers for their help and found a ride back to the capital.
If my experience has taught me anything, it is to take chances. I took a chance by taking Arabic and an even bigger chance by traveling to a foreign country in a region that is the source of fear for so many people. I took chances and had the experience of a lifetime. I had the opportunity to meet new people and learn about a culture very different from our own, and I loved it! Nothing in my life has taught me more about the world and more about myself than my time in the Middle East, a remarkably vibrant region of the world.
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