After a thirteen hour flight, I had finally landed at Dubai International Airport. As someone who had hardly left Michigan, let alone travel over 7000 miles away to another country, my nerves outweighed my excitement at that moment. Getting off the plane was a sleepy blur with the only thought in my head being “don’t lose anything” whether that was valuable documents, luggage, or myself.

I stumbled from the terminal to find a group of people looking about as sleepy and nervous as I felt. Seeing the MSU apparel a few wore, I knew I had found my peers, some of whom would quickly become my friends in the coming days. As a group, we managed to navigate through the two story tall, 600,000   square foot airport and find the guide who would drive us to our hotel for the night.

It was only when we were stepping out into the cool evening that the realization finally started to kick in: I was in Dubai. Me. A person who never went anywhere, who preferred adventures in books over real ones, had just arrived to a country farther than anything my family had ever gone before. Suddenly, excitement outweighed nerves.

Although it was just after Christmas, the desert heat made the night mild with clear skies and only a light breeze rustling the palm trees. Multiple lanes of traffic crawled by as squeaky taxis came and went while the whiz of highway traffic could be heard not far off. Despite the bitter smog, I took my first deep breath in the United Arab Emirates. I was finally here and I was buzzing with excitement to see and learn as much as I could.

During the drive to the hotel, I looked out the window and watched Dubai’s skyline– blobs of colorful lights set against an inky sky– come closer and closer until they morphed into a variety of skyscrapers that towered over us. It was a sight that no textbook picture could ever really capture. It was also a sight so different from what my childhood taught me to believe the Middle East was.

Many American children are fed propaganda from a young age about the Middle East and Islamic religion. Prejudices are especially rooted in ideas that all Middle Eastern countries are war-torn waste lands and Islam is an oppressive and abusive religion of terrorists. The past two years in the classroom taught me how harmful and inaccurate this thinking was but it wasn’t until my time in the UAE that my eyes were truly opened to it. Between great classroom discussions and time exploring both in and out of the incredible city, I was able to learn new ideas in truth rather than fear, something I will draw from for the rest of my life.

Name: Skylar Young
Status: Junior
Major: Zoology – Animal Behavior and Neurobiology
Hometown: Grand Rapids, Michigan
Program: Globalization of Consumerism and Community in Dubai, United Arab Emirates