Maneuvering through the international terminal at O’Hare airport is never an easy task to accomplish. Despite Chicago’s main airport being very efficient in dealing with the vast amount of traffic it endures, it’s typically a chaotic mess. Foreign residents and non-residents swarm the terrain extending their goodbyes to family and friends as the rest of us attempt to unify our traveling group to successfully reach the gate in time without issues. Unless, of course, you’re a lucky lone star rider, in which case you’ll probably have a much easier time. Fortunately, my group and I are not strangers to this environment. We know to limit the amount of checked bags and the exact weight constraints on all carry-on luggage. Passports and tickets should be hidden-yet easily accessible—in our traveling satchels. Although I am pretty familiar with my departure grounds, my destination is new territory that I will be calling my home for the better half of two years. I have been to the Middle East to visit my working expat father before, but never to attempt to establish a life for myself there. The destination I am referring to is Qatar, a small peninsula creeping out of the Persian Gulf bordering Saudi Arabia to the south. My father is a construction engineer and had been working on a project building a large commercial mall in Saudi’s capital, Riyadh for the past three years. I visited him there at the beginning of the 2010 summer for about a week. I wouldn’t have wanted to stay an hour longer as I might have been a victim of heatstroke or third-degree sunburns! He would try to dilute the conditions with optimism such as claiming the climate is tolerable because it is a dry heat; but, at a sweltering 130 degrees Fahrenheit during the day, it’s still more unbearable than having nature call for an entire twelve hour flight. It was interesting to witness a country of a highly male dominated society where women are treated as second class citizens. Chaperoned everywhere by their husbands and concealed under veils, it is like no other place I had ever been to before. I must say, however, watching the Blackhawks notch their first Stanley Cup victory in my lifetime was definitely the highlight of that trip for me. Coming home to the celebratory city of Chicago, immersed in the sea of parading drunkards cheering on the players flaunting the prized cup on the bus along Michigan Avenue, I thought I would never be in a place like Saudi Arabia again. My relocation was not merely random, but actually a result of my academics in junior year of high school. My mother is somewhat more lenient than my father, and I was consequently able to get away with ditching class and shirking my academic responsibilities more frequently. They had been divorced for a while now and my brother decided to move to Saudi with my dad. He had been an exemplary student living over there so my parents and I came to an agreement that it was in my best interest to dwell under the disciplinary rule of my father for the remainder of my high school career. During that time, his company decided to move him to a larger project stationed in the growing city of Doha, Qatar. I was told it is a more open society and heavily western influenced, especially since Qatari nationals make up only 15% of their native land. The remaining majority of the population is working expats reigning from various countries in North America, Europe, and parts of central and eastern Asia. So, knowing that it was going to be more liberating than the restricted, traditional Muslim kingdom that claims to be the homeland of Islam, I had a brighter ambition to engulf myself into the culture and have a rich, fulfilling experience. It was my seventeenth birthday and my party consisted of warm ginger ale, recycled air, and the movie Welcome to Mooseport-which I really only ever glanced up at when my various airplane activities ran stale. It was simply part of my father’s frugal nature to fly in the economy class, it didn’t matter if it was my birthday or not. In fact, the very circumstance that our air tickets were booked on the day of my birth implied they were purchased at a discounted rate. So, I didn’t put it past him that we would end up in the sardine section. At least I had my new Beats headphones to jam on as I sat next to the window gazing out over the Atlantic Ocean in hopes of seeing a cast away survivor drifting on a hunk of wood. I don’t really know what I would do or how I would feel if I became so lucky to come across one. I would probably just hope to spot an ocean liner following that could rescue the struggling survivor. As the mixed views of water and green mountains turned to desolate tan desert lands, we were approaching my new indefinite place of residence. I’ll never forget how broad and miraculous the skyline of Doha was. I was stunned at the number of skyscrapers and how modern all the architecture looked. Never, in a million years, would I have guessed that we were about to live in the confines of an Arab country-much less a modernized one like Qatar. I couldn’t believe I was in Middle East, and I was so eager to become a part of this new city. Looking back at it now, I can confidently say that experiencing such diversity has definitely helped to mold me into the well-rounded individual that I am today. Needless to say, it was the greatest experience of my life.