Q Life Magazine Q Magazine (US) December 2015 | Page 29
Education |
A Surprise
Trip to Doha
“The first things I thought were, one, wow, what a beautiful country; and two,
I feel like I’ve just stepped under a giant hair dryer!” says Zac Sheaffer.
The freshman student at McDaniel College, a private liberal arts college in
Westminster, Maryland, is remembering stepping off the plane in Doha, the capital
of Qatar, in May, at the start of an intense six-day study visit. “It’s really hot,
but not humid like in the U.S.,” he says. “I actually kinda liked it.”
S
heaffer was one of ten McDaniel students to
visit Doha on an improbable study trip this May.
The adventure began just a few weeks earlier, when
he and the rest of Professor Mohamed Esa’s “Arabic
World” class visited the Embassy of the State of Qatar
in Washington, D.C., and met with Ambassador
Mohammed Al-Kuwari.
Impressed by the class’ questions, the Ambassador
asked if anyone had been to Qatar; only one had,
so he spontaneously invited ten students to visit the
country and participate in the annual Doha Forum
(see box Page 31).
There followed some frantic passport applications, all
during final exams. But six weeks later the promise was
fulfilled—the students were boarding a Qatar Airways
plane for the 13 hour-7,800 mile flight from Washington,
D.C., to Doha. Several had never left the U.S. before;
for all but one, it was their first visit to the Middle East.
Building Bridges of Understanding
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience for these students,”
says Arabic Studies lecturer Carol Zaru, who joined
Esa on the trip. “They were just blown away by the
hospitality, the way they were treated. I expected it,
I’m Palestinian, I know about Arab hospitality—but
the students were overwhelmed by the VIP treatment.”
The friendliness went all the way to the top. “At one
point in the Forum, we went up to Kuwait’s oil minister
and talked to him,” Shaeffer recalls. “He was really
friendly and invited us to come and tour his country’s
oil facilities! I mean, I’m a nineteen-year-old kid from
a small town in Maryland, I’m not supposed to meet
people like that!”
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