Settling In and Joining Up

After three long-winded posts in the first two weeks, I have taken a definitive step back and paid attention more to what's happening here in the UAE, rather than frantically trying to relay it back to the homefront as quickly as possible.

This is not an admission of idleness. To the contrary, I've been hard at work (and play, of course). Here are a few rapid-fire highlights / observations for those of you who prefer the quick version:

Highlight 1: I joined the track and field team at AUS last week as a middle- and long-distance runner. With a significantly smaller student body here and a comparable lack of interest in collegiate athletics relative to the United States (aside from football [soccer] and basketball), it's actually fairly easy to join a varsity team here. From what I know, we've also had exchange students on the swimming, basketball, table tennis, squash, and volleyball teams over this semester and last. It's an exceptional experience. Most of us probably participated in team sports at one level or another during adolescence; I was fortunate enough to attend a high school where I could play soccer, basketball, and run cross-country at a competitive level. That luxury went away three years ago when I chose a large, public Division I university (where essentially all student-athletes are on scholarship and ridiculously talented), but it's been amazing to have the opportunity again here. If you're a runner, you understand what I mean when I talk about the joy of making footfalls on a track in unison during practices and the camaraderie you develop with your teammates in the process. It's been great to make some friends in a context beyond the typical "I have class with you" or "I'm in dorms with you" routine. And don't think for a minute that I'm not planning to make a mark beyond participation; I can't wait to compete once the meets start. I miss the feeling of medals around my neck.

Highlight 2: Sharjah Lights Festival. Pictures do this event better justice than do words.

Sharjah Ports

Emirate fountains are tops.

Mosques are so beautiful here.

Observation: If you want the real study abroad experience, there's no substitute for making local friends. While our exchange office has been brilliant about organizing trips for those of us coming from other places, my favorite moments have consistently been the spur-of-the-moment outings with my friends: jaunts into Dubai (on motorcycles, no less), chai karak runs, bonfires on the Jumiera beach (which the Royal Palace Guards quickly but nicely put an end to), trips to sheesha cafés on school nights to watch Manchester United-Arsenal football games, and all manners of other shenanigans. Students here know how to have a good time, sometimes (often) at the expense of studies. There should be no guilt in joining them at what they do best.

Highlight 3: We had the privilege of visiting the city and emirate of Abu Dhabi this past weekend! Our main stops were Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque (the largest mosque in the country) and Masdar Institute (a fledgeling, albeit impressive, graduate research institution within what will – by 2020 – be a zero-carbon-emission city). And in between, we ate Iraqi food, which is seriously the best. Here are pictures for proof.

Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. Sublime.

Interior. 

Self-portrait.

Ablutions.

Reflections.

The cook insisted I take his photograph. I was happy to oblige.

This food is to die for.

Masdar.

Modern angles.

Afterlight, afterhours.

It's cool to have the future happen right in front of you

On the campus side of things, class here is going well; I have no major complaints (and nothing but praise for my Modern Philosophy course – it rocks). It's not a criticism or display of egocentrism in the slightest, but from my conversations with people of many diverse national backgrounds here, I have concluded that the most elite higher educational institutions exist predominantly in the United States and Western Europe. Being raised in America, my educational background is making the academic side of things very easy for me here. AUS is not a subpar university by any stretch of the imagination; conversely, it's ranked either at or near the top for anyone intending to study in the Gulf Region. But being a native English speaker raised in an American educational system gives me a tremendous advantage here. 

This brings up an important point that I would be remiss not to mention. To all the prospective study abroad students out there, let me be very honest for a moment. If you're looking for the superb, most elite academic education on your trip, go to Europe or East Asia. But if that is your expectation upon arrival in this part of the world, let me forewarn you, lest you suffer disappointment. Academia here is on its way up; this university is only 17 years old and already ranked in the top 400 schools in the world. But the real value of education at AUS happens outside the classroom. 

If you study abroad in the Middle East, you're not going to have the easiest access to fabled cities like your peers will in Europe. You won't be wandering cobbled streets in sweaters and scarves, a coffee in one hand and a croissant, scone, or panini in the other. You won't bicycle mountains or glide on gondolas through Venice. You're not going to be drinking pints of better beer than you can find anywhere in the States for less than the price of a litre-sized water.

But if you study abroad in the Middle East, here's what you will have. You will be able to take an long objective look at the entire Western World – Europe, North America, South America [to a degree], Australia / New Zealand, and arguably even some parts of the Pacific Rim. You will be able to question why you want the things that you want, why you're (likely) achievement-oriented and were encouraged to be throughout your life, and why you see the rest of the world in the way that you do. You'll probably see how media nearly always misrepresents unfamiliar faces and places, and you'll begin to awaken to a realization of the value of human interaction with people dramatically different than yourself. You'll learn how to live differently, instead of simply finding reinforcement in the continuation of the habits and customs that are already natural to you.

The honeymoon period is over for me here, and with it, I've tried to leave behind most of my desire to experience spectacle (a tourist attitude). Instead, I'm now looking to invest my time and energy into people and opportunities that offer a valuable, longer-term payoff. Last week, I attended the student fair and joined 11 clubs, including the American Cultural Club, for which I'm now the unofficial "Officer of Cultural Coordination." I've befriended the entire third floor of the CAAD (architecture, art, and design) building – as a finance student who has no classes there. I've already mentioned the track and field team, of course. And somehow, I'm walking around with a henna tattoo of my name in Armenian on my right forearm. This is AUS; anything is possible.

Throughout it all, I strive to remain thankful for all these opportunities that are coming alive for me. Not every day is uniquely exciting. After all, I'm still a student; I still study. Yet a sense of purposefulness, of manifest destiny, exists here, permeating the very atmosphere and air I breathe. And I am addicted to it.

To borrow from Aristotle in closing: challenges are essential for human flourishing. Here, I embrace each one as it comes.

Yours until the end – Jon

Halflight.

A Treatise on Travel (and other things)

Tonight is alive with countless smells, neon lights, masses of people. Take a deep breath, let the full outdoor air rush into the space between your ribs.

You shouldn’t take a camera where I am going.

Do you know what an abaya shop looks like? Have you ever seen a mannequin covered from head to toe, with even the niqāb shrouding all but her opaque, listless plastic eyes? Can you imagine how the men who work the store look at you, an American male wearing Nikes and shorts, as you walk into this establishment with your friends? In this position, the blood floods every conscious appendage in your body as you take the brunt of this foreign environment full flush in the face.

What picture have I conjured up in your head? Perhaps one of fear, maybe even a shiver of horror at the discriminations to which I undoubtedly bore witness? Would you believe me if I told you that the experience is beautiful, if I described the kindness we meet at each turn? The sounds of bartering, garment trading, and melodic Gulf Arabic spills out of the souk shops into the warm, vibrant air, and, denied for what we seek, yet undaunted, we move onwards.

We are in desperate search of spandex fabric, which we will find, insha’Allah...

We scoured the Heart of Sharjah that night for the elusive stretchy material, needed for the design models the architectural students I was accompanying were building. We wandered through nearly fifty streetside shops, two shawarmas cut from the meat tornado in front of us with mango nectar to wash the meal down, and nearly a thousand grinning teeth telling us the same thing– No, no, we don't have that, but _________ does. Which way? we asked. Always down the street and to the right, so we circled tirelessly through the unquiet darkness.

You might say we failed, and if by that you mean that we didn't find what we had come to acquire, I couldn't argue with you. From the materialistic perspective, it was an exercise in futility. But if there is any one thing that I have learned from my 18 days in the UAE, it's to shut up about the momentary objective and instead experience what my surroundings have to offer. So that's what I did, and I found something ever the more valuable than a synthetic fiber. I found happiness amongst squalor, real people living real lives honestly and without the cognitive disconnect that privilege grants so many of us in the developed world. I found people who asked real questions, people who believe in things they've never been able to see. And I found a big part of my heart tugging at me to stay there, to not return to the effortlessly manicured grounds of my campus.

This experience is but one vignette within three weeks of extraordinary adventure – a synecdoche of my time here. When I think back to my expectations of this country before I left home, I am reminded that I formed hardly any. Somehow, I knew before coming that much of what I was stepping into would defy expectations.

It has. All the better for me, because I knew I would learn from it.

I never could have imagined the outpouring of support I would have waiting for me here. I don't care if I've said it before; it rings truer all the time. Today, for example, I passed by the piano in the student center, on my way to somewhere else. A friend of mine saw me, called my name, ran me down, and insisted that I come back and show his friends the music that I write. This has become the norm already, somehow. I have been playing the piano for 14 years, in the process devoting thousands of hours to practice – but I have never received this kind of support from anyone, even my own family. I am astounded daily by the unmitigated warmth of this eclectic grouping of people.

Nor could I have expected the opportunism that permeates the atmosphere here, nor the way it feels like the American West, as though anything - good or bad - is possible. Being cavalier here is sort of the norm; you don't wait for things to come to you; you make them happen. It seems a truer manifest destiny than we enjoy in America: not because the opportunities are more accessible here, but rather because the general attitude is better inclined towards self-actualizing one's life according to his or her dreams. I wish I could parlay the inspiration that settles upon me as I've listened to students, cab drivers, and all other walks of life tell about who they are becoming. It is once again romanticizing the world for me.

However, I should also denote that the case for realism is not absent here. If you wanted, I could give you a harsher reality about unmet expectations: for instance, how something in the nature of the student-professor relationship here makes for some of the most foreign classroom dynamics you can imagine. I could describe my shock when a girl candidly defended child labor to my operations management professor yesterday morning, straight-faced and earnest. I could describe for you the cognitive dissonance of many here who are unable to grasp the vastness and value of the privilege they enjoy; I'm in four classes with third-year business students, and I am one of only five students total who has held any sort of legitimate employment. Wealth has its drawbacks, too, not least of all on your world perspective towards poverty and hard work; some students here came from high schools where instructors accepted pay for passing grades. I could inform you that the dorms don't look any less like prisons or mental hospitals than when I first arrived, and I doubt that I'll find any better way to handle them than by avoiding them during the daylight hours. Most haunting of all, I could relay the sinking feeling I get in the pit of my guiltily full stomach when I pass by the janitorial and groudskeeping staff, who never say a word but do occasionally make incredible eye contact. They are migrant workers subsisting on below-legal-minimum wages and dangling on the precarious brink of either starvation or work visa revocation. These are not my expectations for basic standards of the way things should be, things I often take for granted in America.

These issues are real, and I'm not trying to sweep them under the rug to sell you a fake travel guide. You are going to see things you don't like when you go somewhere new, after the honeymoon fades and you wake up from that filmy dream of wanderlust. It is truly difficult for me to reconcile the problems I see with the wonder I feel about this place. But that's everywhere. Here is still incredible. You can't find people like this anywhere else in the world.

  

Meet the bakers, calligraphers, and camel race bookies of the United Arab Emirates. Their stories are better than yours, I promise. I've talked with them enough to know. The things they teach me about kindness, about respect for other cultures, about reserving judgment for a citizen of the country that has waged so much war in their world... it convicts me to live with a stronger connection to the ideals I espouse. They are industrious, charismatic, and – above all else – loving. The lessons they teach me are priceless lessons, ones I want to pass on to every person that I know. But I know that it's just not as powerful second-hand, so I recommend something else to you instead:

Travel. Please, please, please travel.

Since I matriculated two-and-a-half years ago, I have witnessed first-hand how college is a great opportunity for young people to transform themselves in incredible ways. I have watched friends rise and fall not unlike ancient Rome or Carthage; while hyperbole, it really is astounding the amount of change one can undergo in such a short time. I have not been exempt from this syndrome, having watched my dreams, desires, aspirations, knowledge, and applied wisdom expand, bend, and occasionally snap. But this travel experience, this parachute into the 100% unfamiliar, has been a whole other animal entirely.

And I have come to this basic conclusion. If you want a shift in your knowledge or the way you consider the world around you, I suggest you do yourself the following favors. Read. Study. Take classes, even re-enroll at university if you feel that you must. Talk to people who are different than you. Take chances and embrace opportunities that carry the potential to expand the way you are living.

But if you are looking for something more, a true and insubstitutable impetus for real change in your lifestyle... if you are looking for a irreversible shift in the way you live – affecting more than just your daily habits and affectations – I beg you to travel. The longer and the more unfamiliar, the better. Travel alone, if possible. Wear a confident smile, but talk only enough to get the person across the table from you kickstarted. Ask probing questions and apologize if you offend anyone (small hint, though: with questions, it's nearly impossible to do so). Don't answer quickly when the questions are turned back on you. Take an opportunity to change in that very moment where your thoughts become actionable. Stop letting convenience, custom, and habit do your thinking for you. And if you can even manage half of this, you will accomplish far more than you would have thought possible beforehand. 

Here is just a sampling of the results of saying yes to the newness available to me in this place:

Desert camping; highly recommended.

Desert sunrises: see above caption.

When you put thirty guys together in the desert and add campfire and steel wool, this is what you get.

Camel racing. This is indeed a real thing. It's free, if you're ever in the neighborhood and want to drop by.

This makes driving look peaceful, but I'm lucky to be alive after a few cab rides.

The best moments have not been captured on camera, as you might be able to imagine. Some have been auditory and can be found here on my personal blog's music page. I've written nine new songs since arriving; it's been one of the most creatively productive periods of my life. I would love for you to share in these sounds in which I've been investing my expressive emotion. Similarly, none of the scintillating conversations can be captured by any other medium than writing about it ex post. You win some, you lose some when it comes to preserving these memories.

There is a wonderful published work called Riding the Waves of Culture by Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden Turner, which delivers an idea I find very applicable for closing this mammoth entry (and I do apologize if you've gotten this far and I've wasted your time). We often hear the following aphorism repeated, especially when it comes to travel: "when in Rome, do as the Romans." This is certainly a good practice, but there's a better way to do it yet. Instead of simply imitating, when in Rome, a person should understand the behavior of the Romans and in the process become a more complete version of himself. This perfectly summarizes a massive concept I've been struggling to define since I got here. Studying abroad is not simply about conforming to a new way of thinking, a new set of customs, and a new cultural identity. It's about bringing your own background to the table as well, considering the new elements of what you are experiencing in a new environment, and choosing the type of life that you are now going to live moving forwards into the future. This is the truest value of a travel experience. You are given the chance to combine strengths, not to select one over the other.

I have watched pieces of my life that I thought were dead come back to life here. I am once again outgoing, excited about academia, and ready to embrace opportunism with a renewed vigor. I feel infinitely younger and yet older at the same time. Dormant things are reawakening, and I am growing exponentially wiser in this season of life. In this way, I am not changing from who I was into someone else, but rather becoming more me than I was before. These things were always inside of me, but I cannot underscore enough the catalyzing role this Sharjah experience has played in the process. My hope now is that I can return to America in four months, having retained and further expanded this treasure of lifestyle learning to even greater heights. 

Wondering what's next for me now? So am I! So stick around, and we'll keep rolling along on this journey together.

Until next time – Jon

At the Atlantis resort, atop the reclaimed Palm Island in Dubai.

A Walk on the Cultural Side

How is it that one can learn about culture between swings of a table tennis racket and thrusts of a billiard cue? If you were to ask me what I have done since arriving in the UAE 12 days ago, a predominant answer would have to be: playing games. Football, volleyball, basketball, table tennis, foosball, billiards - I've played all these and whatever else you fancy. It's been a surefire way to meet people. I've gotten very skilled at asking, "Can I have next game?" Most everyone says yes.

Some people need a class or a scheduled Q&A session to learn a new culture. They take ravenous, structured notes and chatter quietly during bathroom breaks about whatever has struck them as interesting. I'm not rejecting this practice, but my approach is different. Why sterilize a necessarily organic and uncertain concept? I prefer to get my cultural fix by immersing myself in it -- by talking with real people and asking real questions -- and that's exactly what I've done. Let me tell you something; I've learned more over these past 12 days in the backs of taxicabs, avoiding certain death at each curvature in the expressway, than I have in two traditionally restored villages, four hours at Dubai's Centre for Cultural Understanding, and multiple organized lectures on the local culture. I'm very thankful to the exchange office here for kindly providing these opportunities to learn, but the content was, as could be expected, obviously somewhat airbrushed. The real stuff is happening in the dirty Sharjah kitchens where they make the most delicious shawarma you've ever tasted.  It's happening in the labor camps that any local is more than happy to talk to you about, where the workers make $163 a month in the shadow of the world's tallest skyscraper. It's happening in the architecture building where your brand new friends are (politely) peppering you with legitimate questions about faith, family, and politics. It's happening when you get lost in the Dubai darkness and can't find a cab for three kilometers, so instead you walk and talk modernist philosophy as interpreted by the Eastern world. It is in these situations where I feel fully free and at these times when I have fallen so deeply in love with this real, tactile environment.

The number of nationalities represented by my burgeoning friend group has continued to swell. Yesterday, I met a half Chinese, half Turkish set of brothers, and that wasn't even the most interesting ethnic mix. To the eclectic list, add Sudanese, Yemeni, Armenian, Lebanese-Palestinian (a common find, due to Palestine's conflicted status as a sovereignty), Scottish- Omani (yes, that's correct), Jordanian, and Libyan. Not unlike the selection of entertainment in nearby Dubai, you can bet on just about any culture being here.

Contrary to what us Westerners tend to do, it's totally unfair to bundle these very different cultures under a common umbrella of Middle Eastern, or even Muslim, culture. So let's talk commonalities instead of differences; for all the foreignness of this place, I am continuously surprised with how much all of us share. For starters, I am still floored each day by the hospitality I receive at every turn. I can't decipher why after ten minutes of talking to a new person for the first time I am routinely handed a homemade cup of coffee, offered full plates of food, and served all manners of invitations to go do things. No one will let me pay for anything in this country; I feel like my wallet is in a straitjacket. I'm not used to such easy friendships without guarded reservations, and I guarantee you that I'm not the sort to elicit immediate and uncompromised trust. It's amazing, this outpouring of human kindness, and the effect is not lost on me.

I'll be honest. My intention when beginning this post a few days ago was to capture the essence of local culture: id est, the Emirati people. But I've learned that culture here is a not a homogenous product, or even one with a clear spectral gradient from one culture to another. It's made up of many distinct ingredients that compliment one another yet remain independent - much different, in my opinion, than America's melting pot. And plus, you already read what I said up above. I cannot, in good faith, airbrush this living, breathing culture for you. I just can't.

So if you want to learn about the Emirati, try reading a book, because the history is really pretty fascinating. But here I can at least compromise by telling you something you may not capture from just reading about it: these people are truly and exceptionally proud of their country -- citizens or non-citizens. Along with the other exchange students, I spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday last week exploring some traditionally reconstructed villages in both Sharjah and Dubai. It astounded me to realize that not eighty years ago, the major industry here was pearl diving and the population was only a few thousand. The subsequent decades have yielded a rapid expansion -- fueled by discovery of first gold, then oil -- the pace and freneticism of which is unparalleled in modern history. Despite some of the lingering human rights issues at play around here, it is the truest rags-to-riches story to which I've been privy, and it's impossible not to get caught up in the fervor. I mean, just look at these cities and the wonders they contain.

Fishing vessels in the city of Sharjah

At the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding

Traditional Emirati building. The nails on the posts are meant to dissuade pigeons (obviously to no avail).

Masih loves the Atlantis resort; its only twin worldwide is in Nassau.

The stunning Dubai skyline, dominated by the world's tallest building - the Burj Khalifa

Some lovely fellow exchange students on the wharf of the Dubai Creek

The renowned gold souk. Not a bad place for an engagement, if you ask me.

A partial Sharjah cityscape, from adjacent the Gulf beach.

Sublime

One of many floating restaurants that snake through the waters here

Dubai is brimming with excitement for the World Expo - 6 years from now!

Sharjah is pretty cool, even with its upstart sister Dubai right next door

Yes, this land is built for spectacle, and no, it's not just a façade. This is the real deal. Patriotism, even among non-citizens, is quite simply amazing. National Day, in December, is absolute bedlam; the distinctive green, red, black, and white flags fly on every rooftop and from every car, and the streets are clogged with traffic going nowhere in particular but concerned instead with demonstrating their nationalism passionately. I love it.

It wouldn't have mattered what my background was before arriving in the UAE. I am by now convinced I would have been infected with this fever regardless -- to thirst paradoxically for both the cultural and the commercial, that unique combination of modernity and antiquity that I cannot explain but with which I am thoroughly smitten. I'm an introvert normally, but the people that surround me are too welcoming and engaging for me to stay indoors. They humble me unceasingly, because I just don't warrant the kindness I have received from them. You can understand, then, why I have to live in this free air, drinking in both the sunshine and splendor with which the land and people are awash. I am typically quite content to live in a rather dull academic shell, but I've never been happier to be coaxed out into such a bright, bright world as this.

Class, too, has begun -- perhaps unfortunately. My institutions ought to be happy enough with my extracurricular learning! But no matter; off I'll head to Business Ethics and Social Responsibility in the morning. The classes are pretty fun, and I adore my philosophy course, but this outdoor, exciting world puts the classroom to shame. No contest.

My final thought is this, because it's the one I can't evict from my mind. As an individual who loves travel and learning, I cherish the connection that can be forged between myself and another person, even upon first encounter. It's inexpressible, this feeling of committing to full-on eye contact with someone else, allowing real, messy communication and kinship to actually occur. I've seen life jump into more pairs of oculi in the past two weeks than it seems I've seen in a lifetime. This has taught me something important. We are engaging in a fundamental human transaction at each juncture during this lifetime. Within these exchanges, kindness is the universal human currency; considering this truth, it's no wonder that this land is so rich.

Hasta la buena vista - Jon

At the Sharjah fish souk, acting crabby.