In waiting for NSLI-Y notifications to come out this year, we've been thinking about last year quite a bit (by we, I mean myself and another one of the girls from Jordan who applied again and is a semifinalist with me).
Exchange programs are strange things. You go learn about the culture, and for NSLI-Y specifically, as it is funded as a language learning program, to study the target language. But I assure you, if you return having only learned verb conjugations and vocabulary words, you've wasted your time.
This is a post about the NSLI-Y group. While we definitely were immersed in the Middle East itself, it's not to say that we didn't become tight-knit as a group. Sometimes I wonder if it's ridiculous to have fallen in love with everyone and everything so quickly this summer. The program director in DC commented when we got back that we were closer as a group than she'd ever seen before. (I can't remember if that was before or after we all ended up with pudding on our noses at dinner...). Maybe it was because there were only 15 of us, and it wasn't a group of 30 or 40. Maybe it was simply because a lot happened, which sounds strange, but I feel like we had more of adventure than might be typical. Being on an exchange like this is kind of like being in a band. It's not that you're isolated, because there are people all around, all the time. There's very little privacy, and yet you and the other band members end up being closer than you could have ever imagined. Maybe it's because we could only speak English to each other, or maybe it's because we were the ones sharing everything with each other. No matter how much I love Arabic, after six weeks of class, there were times I just needed to talk in English about stuff that you can't say in a second language that fast. We all shared everything with each other, good and bad. That's enough to make any group be as close as we were.
After the summer, I come back to the States, and look around at everyone. The strangest thing was in DC, seeing ourselves in the same places we had met each other, seven weeks before. Except this time, we were the furthest thing from strangers. I remember hanging out in the pool our first night together. It was strange, and awkward. I remember studying Arabic altogether in someone's room the next night, not quite sure what to make of each other. But after a summer together, halfway around the world, the awkwardness was more than gone. We didn't sleep our last night - at all. We couldn't bear to sleep through a moment together.
So, now we're waiting to find out about another summer. We can't help but wonder how it will change, as last summer so was much defined by the people in the group. Sure, we'll be studying the same language if we get accepted (insha'allah), but that means almost nothing. The point of an exchange isn't words and grammar - you can learn that in a classroom at home. Exchange is something to learn more than that. I can't tell you what it is here, it's something to be discovered. Whether you do that in the target language, or in English as a result of the target, it becomes one in the same. And you fall in love with all of it, even if you were only there for six weeks.
And so she posted this video on my Facebook. It was kind of a theme song for us this summer, one of the few songs we all knew before getting there that we could sing along to when we needed it. But it's true, "home is wherever I'm with you." It's strange like that.
Exchange programs are strange things. You go learn about the culture, and for NSLI-Y specifically, as it is funded as a language learning program, to study the target language. But I assure you, if you return having only learned verb conjugations and vocabulary words, you've wasted your time.
This is a post about the NSLI-Y group. While we definitely were immersed in the Middle East itself, it's not to say that we didn't become tight-knit as a group. Sometimes I wonder if it's ridiculous to have fallen in love with everyone and everything so quickly this summer. The program director in DC commented when we got back that we were closer as a group than she'd ever seen before. (I can't remember if that was before or after we all ended up with pudding on our noses at dinner...). Maybe it was because there were only 15 of us, and it wasn't a group of 30 or 40. Maybe it was simply because a lot happened, which sounds strange, but I feel like we had more of adventure than might be typical. Being on an exchange like this is kind of like being in a band. It's not that you're isolated, because there are people all around, all the time. There's very little privacy, and yet you and the other band members end up being closer than you could have ever imagined. Maybe it's because we could only speak English to each other, or maybe it's because we were the ones sharing everything with each other. No matter how much I love Arabic, after six weeks of class, there were times I just needed to talk in English about stuff that you can't say in a second language that fast. We all shared everything with each other, good and bad. That's enough to make any group be as close as we were.
After the summer, I come back to the States, and look around at everyone. The strangest thing was in DC, seeing ourselves in the same places we had met each other, seven weeks before. Except this time, we were the furthest thing from strangers. I remember hanging out in the pool our first night together. It was strange, and awkward. I remember studying Arabic altogether in someone's room the next night, not quite sure what to make of each other. But after a summer together, halfway around the world, the awkwardness was more than gone. We didn't sleep our last night - at all. We couldn't bear to sleep through a moment together.
So, now we're waiting to find out about another summer. We can't help but wonder how it will change, as last summer so was much defined by the people in the group. Sure, we'll be studying the same language if we get accepted (insha'allah), but that means almost nothing. The point of an exchange isn't words and grammar - you can learn that in a classroom at home. Exchange is something to learn more than that. I can't tell you what it is here, it's something to be discovered. Whether you do that in the target language, or in English as a result of the target, it becomes one in the same. And you fall in love with all of it, even if you were only there for six weeks.
And so she posted this video on my Facebook. It was kind of a theme song for us this summer, one of the few songs we all knew before getting there that we could sing along to when we needed it. But it's true, "home is wherever I'm with you." It's strange like that.
And so here we are, waiting to find out about next year, anxious to hear about our next adventure. I'm definitely excited to be able to use Arabic on a daily basis again, but I'm also just excited to see what this summer will turn into. iA :)
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