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YES Alumni Chapter Updates
West Bank/Gaza
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| Samy Qarmout (center
right) helped to interview YES applicant Yafa Al Mozaein along
with Chris Shinn, West Bank/Gaza AMIDEAST Country Director (far
left) and Dr. Akram Habeeb, a Fulbright alumnus (far right).
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West Bank alumna Safaa Halahla participated in the
Pre-Departure Orientation program for departing YES participants
in July, 2004. Alumnae Safaa and Hadeel Dalloul assisted in the
student interviewprocess for the 2005 YES recruitment, which took
place in February.
The two reflected on how their year-abroad on the
YES program has changed them personally.
Hadeel notes:
Coming back from the USA was an experience that
was different from any other experience I have ever had. That one
year in the USA caused a lot of remarkable changes in my personality
since I was away from my family, my friends and my society. When
I came back I found everything different. I thought that everything
had changed while I was gone; I didn't realize that I was the one
who had changed until my family and my friends started to tell me
how I changed. It was more difficult for them to adapt to my new
personality and ideas than it was for me; I had no problem with
readjusting to my new life! The biggest problem was with my family.
They thought that I was acting as a grown-up more than as a teenager.
They wanted me to behave like girls my age; they wanted me to stay
the same little girl that wanted to go to America just to see what
it looked like. At first they were shocked at the different person
I had become, but they now find that this is a positive thing. They
see that I now know what I want and I know how to get what I want.
I am a more social person. All of this has made me discover new
things about my own society, and made me see things from a new point
of view. This is all due to the YES program, which gave me self-confidence
and let me discover new facts about the world.
Safaa says:
No wonder that my life has changed 180 degrees
since I came back from the USA. I am a completely different person;
I have my own personality, confidence and I know I can rely entirely
on myself. I guess the YES program did me a great favor by changing
me into that new young lady who was always inside of me. It was
not easy to
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