Hi, everyone!
I grew up in a town full of people from different parts of the world: Viet Nam, Mexico, China, and Romania were just a few places where my friends and friends' parents came from. At home, my dad would talk about Viet Nam (where he grew up), and my mom would help my siblings and me think about how life is similar and different for people who look different than us: Arabs, for example.
When I was in high school, I wanted to learn more about life for Americans who were also Muslim and Arab. I did an internship where I met many women from Yemen who lived in America, had families, and were learning English. We did language exchanges, where I learned Arabic and they learned English. It was an amazing experience. After that, I wanted to study Arabic more formally. More opportunities for serious study kept opening up, and although it was hard work, I loved learning how to speak and write the Arabic language.
In my senior year of high school, I applied for a State Department scholarship to learn Arabic in another country for the summer. I won the opportunity to study in Morocco for six weeks before going to college! In the summers during college, I would always study Arabic, either in university programs in California or in Jordan.
I decided I wanted to spend more than a summer abroad.
