Amideast Education Abroad in the MENA

As an Arabic and French speaker, I firmly believe the significance and indispensability of cultural exchange. Being a Chinese provides me a different lens in observing from an “outsider’s” view toward the Islamic world fused with heterogeneity and diversity, either in terms of languages or cultures of social domains. My main objective is to uproot Eurocentric and essentialist viewpoint toward the Third World, Morocco in particular. Both language courses and area studies courses have equipped me ...

The classes were well organized and comprehensive. I left the program feeling like I had a good understanding of the conflict situations that we had studied and how they had been or might be solved. The professors were very knowledgeable in the topics they were teaching, not only from doing research but also real life experiences that they drew upon. They mixed personal stories into their lectures to give us a more realistic picture of what they were describing. The organized outings were we...

I didn't know what to expect from Amman, Jordan, but I had a great time there. It's a beautiful city with great food (the hummus and the falafel! I miss it). Shopping in the markets downtown, seeing art and culture, eating good food and smoking hookah just about everywhere. The only thing was that I was there during Ramadan, and a lot of shops and restaurants were closed during daylight hours... but that inconvenience was far outweighed by how cool it was to observe & experience Ramadan and the ...