Week 11 of my Study Abroad Experience in Haifa, Israel

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a great week because I had an amazing one. I received my grades back from all of my midterms from the previous week. I got an A on my midterm paper for Terrorism and Responses, and A’s on both of my midterms for spoken Arabic and MSA Arabic. I have been very happy with the improvement that I have seen in my language skills in the recent weeks. I can hold conversations and order food at restaurants. I have many friends who are native speakers and they love teaching me the language and the culture behind it. I have an upcoming final presentation for my spoken Arabic class, and I plan on singing a song in Arabic for it. When I mentioned this idea to my teacher, she was very excited about it. I hope that I will be accepted to the Critical Language Scholarship Program in Jordan for the 2020 summer. This program will enable to me to master the language skills that I am learning here in Israel. Yesterday, I went to an international Christian gathering meeting in the dorms and it was very nice. There were Christians from many different countries around the world and we were able to praise God and read bible verses together. Today, I was able to participate in a photoshoot for the Israeli Council of Higher Education. They had a professional photographer take pictures of us around the University of Haifa, Campus. Once, I receive these pictures I will be sure to share them with you all. I had some feelings of homesickness last week because of the Thanksgiving holiday which caused me to miss my family and friends back home. The International School was very kind and put on a Thanksgiving dinner for all of the international students. They even made us 3 turkeys which were very tasty. Additionally, they asked me and my friend Jemima from France to perform a song for everyone at dinner. We chose to perform a song that we both grew up singing in our church’s back home titled “His Eye is on the Sparrow” by Lauryn Hill and Tanya Blount. Everyone enjoyed the song and we were very happy about this. It was nice to be able to share a part of my culture with the wonderful people that I have met here. Lastly, I would like to say that in my personal experience the best strategy for dealing with feelings of homesickness is to go out and immerse yourself in the culture around you. I am truly blessed to be here, and words cannot express how thankful I am to everyone who helped me in my journey. I wish you all a great week!