My infatuation with people’s cultures must have been conceived from my parent’s work. Growing up, my Ugandan father worked for the World Bank and my Malawian mother for the United Nations. I changed schools and countries constantly. I could understand so many languages and yet I only spoke English fluently. It was impossible to place roots in only one solid foundation. I felt I belonged to every country, every religion, every race, every language and every culture. Although I was born and mostly raised in suburban Washington DC, I was shuffled between Ethiopia and New York from the time I was two years old. When I turned ten, I had my first big adventure and moved to Kenya. Nairobi was such an exciting and busy city. It was so different from the politeness of Montgomery County, Maryland. I automatically adopted a very rough Kiswahili accent and tagged along the social norms of my new home. Nairobi was very dangerous, my mother was always so nervous of us being raped or kidnapped yet there was something that felt so carefree about living in that part of the world. People were so much more thankful to be living and to have all that they did. I went on my mother’s mission trips to visit the villages and hospitals; my mother wanted me to be aware of other people’s situation. I don’t think I understood poverty until this time in my life and since, I can never forget what it means to have and have not. It is difficult being that age and not fully comprehending why you are so fortunate and others are not. Needless to say, I wanted to save all those people and take them home with me. I cried for hours and decided from then on out that since nobody was doing a good enough job helping these people. Not my mother, not my father, and certainly not the United Nations. I decided the only person who could help them was me; I was going to save the world. To my ten/eleven year old self, this seemed simple and completely plausible. At first it was just doing a lot of volunteer work and community service; helping at hospitals, planting in villages, going to orphanages, collecting food and clothes. It was easier said than done and still seemed so irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Like all good things, my term in Kenya came to an end after three years and my mother was again relocated to Beirut, Lebanon. If ever one was to believe in love at first sight it was now at this moment when I landed in this magical place that was so different from what I had been taught about the Middle East. I saw no war paint tatted teenagers or demolished building or even army tanks. Beirut is beautiful, no, Beirut is gorgeous. My love affair with this city saw no end as I wandered along its historic streets. Each building, church, mosque and curb held a secret I was determined to keep. Every smile was a question I was all too willing to answer. Dazzling beaches and vibrant skies, the city hypnotized me. Lebanese people are incredibly warm and friendly, almost uncomfortably so for someone who had lived in a place plagued with violence. It took some getting used to but it didn’t take long. I loved walking around my small neighbourhood of Brummana and speaking Frarabic with the local shop owners who I knew by name and greeted me with free fruit and bon bons. The summer I moved to Lebanon I started summer camp at the school I would attended the following fall at Brummana High School. Students from all over the Middle East came to BHS for summer 2006 and I was immersed in talk of Middle Eastern politics almost immediately. It was never something I could grasp properly, the extent of my knowledge pretty much stopped at “peace in the middle east!” Everyone had a side and was fiercely passionate about defending it. I will never forget that lunch when I asked my new Palestinian best friend why she kept calling Israel “Palestine”, because it is not actually a country. Despite my ignorance and the fact that being American made me the ‘enemy’, I was always forgiven and they encouraged me to ask questions. What was Hezbollah? Why do you wear that kuffiyeh? What’s the difference between Shiite and Sunni, aren’t you all Muslim? Horrific and enlightening stories came from all over. I couldn’t believe some of the things people were telling me. Why had I never heard about this on CNN (which in my mind was the most reliable news service in the world)? My Supergirl crusade to save the world took a break as I slowly realized that I could not save what I did not understand. The world was far more intricate than I had thought and thirteen year old girl could not possibly fix it all in one day, well not yet anyway. I wrote all the details of my new life in a journal I was hoping to share with my older sisters who were still in the states. Before I could even settle into my new apartment, the impossible happened. I call it the impossible because I had been told a million times that it would be impossible for anyone to bomb Lebanon again. Peace had come to this country after the civil war and there was no cause for it. Unfortunately, Lebanon found itself in the midst of a conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. Bombs were being dropped on Lebanese soil and yet it didn’t really have anything to do with them. Major roadways were blocked and the airport and been destroyed. All major organizations and embassies were arranging to have their dependants evacuated. This time was very confusing for me. I wasn’t scared, though I could hear the bombs in the background but I knew the severity of the situation. We waited until it was our time to leave. The United Nations had us exit Lebanon by a coach bus into Syria. From there we drove to Jordan and stayed in the Dead Sea area. I remember feeling scared, excited, happy, sad and anxious all the same time. I wanted to know what happened to all my new friends, we had left so abruptly we had no chance to keep in touch. Watching the news was a different story, the conflict was exaggerated and sugar coated by the international media. Nobody was talking about the innocent people who had nowhere to go and had to remain in Lebanon. The Lebanese people who had nothing to do with the conflict and yet felt the repercussions the most. Life was a standstill for so many and I was disgusted by how the situation was being handled. I wrote to all my friends and family in America to let them know we were safe and all I had seen. The truth from my own eyes was the opposite, they said, of what they had imagined to be happening. I started writing to them often, giving them detailed glimpses into my life but more importantly the lives of those around me. Those who had gotten out and the rare correspondences from those who did not. My mother called me a mini-journalist. I was so inquisitive and concerned. I talked to the people she worked with wanting to know the truth or the official truth. I never hesitated when asked if I would ever return. Once that door had been opened there was no closing it, there was a story nobody was telling and it’s never easy to walk away from your first love. I knew then that the best way for me to ‘save the world’ was to write the truth as I had experienced. I created awareness wherever I went. I wanted to be a journalist from that moment on because I felt that it was what I was meant to do. The American University in Dubai is the perfect place for me to achieve my academic and career goals and also grow as a person in a culture i love and respect. It is an amazing fusion of where i am from and where i want to be. It would enhance my understanding and nurture my passion to study at a university which has the same values that i do.