At the UO I majored in International Studies, and Geography. Picking Arabic to fill my language requirement had been a complete whim, but it rapidly became a pivotal part of my studies. After my sophomore year I traveled to Bahrain to help lead youth programs during the Bahraini summer festival – an opportunity that arose in part because I happened to be the only one applying who had any mention of Arabic studies on my resume. From Bahrain I continued onto Jordan for a semester abroad. Afterwards, I spent the winter interning at an Arab Women’s Rights organization in southern Israel. By then the uprisings had begun to sweep across North Africa. Two weeks after Mubarak stepped down I landed in Cairo to experience the heady aftermath of the revolution.

This small glimpse of the very early days of the dramatic political changes set into motion my senior thesis on the Historical Context for the Responses of the Syrian and Egyptian Armies during the Arab Spring. My Arabic skills, rudimentary as they still were, were crucial to sift through sources on the Arab militaries that didn’t exist in English.

During my travels in my junior year I became both fascinated and frustrated by the mess of Arabic dialects and accents I was confronted with each time I relocated. After graduating I returned to the region in order to try to get a better grasp of some of these dialects and explore more of the Middle East. I spent a year teaching English in the West Bank and subsequently worked in Tunisia and Egypt for local organizations. Though my work has been in English, Arabic has been crucial to daily life, in everything from buying bread to making friends. Sitting in my first Arabic classes at U of O and gaping at the squiggly lines on the board I had no idea the language, region, culture and history those squiggles would open up for me. I am currently based in Turkey where I am continuing to try to make inroads with Arabic (Syrian dialect now) and plan to remain in the region in the coming years.