My values are happiness, justice and freedom, and having realized them, I decided to use my education to focus on the Middle East. I now have two associate degrees, one in Social and Behavioral Sciences and one in Business Administration. However, I didn’t want to stop my education there. I finished two years at my community college and decided that I wanted to earn a Bachelor’s degree, which would mean only two more years of schooling. I decided to finish out my Bachelor’s degree at a school in northern California, which I still attend. I am at the end of my junior year there.
I have the amazing opportunity to finish my junior year in Amman, Jordan. I currently take Arabic classes here, along with classes about Middle Eastern history, politics and economics. My life is a lot different here than in California in some ways; in other ways, it’s just the same. The similarities are the horrible traffic and the cycle of school and work. The differences are that I am now immersed in a beautifully different culture, and I have had to live without a lot of my personal comforts, like my family or even just my car. Oh, and another thing that’s different here: I am currently confined to my apartment for sixteen hours a day in the name of containing a global pandemic...
So far, my time in Jordan has been a rollercoaster ride of trying to fall in love with a city yet not being able to go anywhere in it. I have loved the experiences I had when I wasn’t under quarantine, like camping in Wadi Rum and visiting Petra, one of the wonders of the world. I am now learning to love the experiences that I have under quarantine, like getting better at cooking and catching up on Arabic soap operas, another great wonder of the world.
