My story starts 2 years ago. I was nominated to be an international student in Cadiz Universidad in Spain, so I applied and got accepted. As any young man, I was excited to see the world and start exploring and get out of my comfort zone. But because I was a Syrian refugee, I was denied a visa. I had already left my home country once in pursuit of safety and education, but here I am yet again, facing another challenge.
I was depressed, angry, and unsatisfied. I was filled with negativity and I was very tired.
I had to accept the fact that I wasn’t going to go to Spain. And once I did, once I realized that there’s no way to travel, I thought I should start challenging myself to get to know people from other cultures, and to communicate with those who have different thoughts and mentalities. That’s when I decided to join YSN, Yarmouk University Students Network, a group of students from my university who travelled through the Erasmus plus programme.
As a group, our main goal is to help international students in our university by taking them on tours to familiarize them with the campus and introducing them to their new life here in Jordan. This has been a challenge for myself, a challenge I was willing to take in order to learn and grow. Through our time together, I learn their language and they learn mine, recently I’ve been teaching a lot of them Arabic.
I started learning Spanish a couple of months ago, so I am practicing my Spanish with the Spanish speaking people.
This program was a great opportunity for me. I am making friends and having fun, all while learning new things.
Here are some pictures we took in different places. One of these pictures was in my house. We invited the students for lunch, and we had a good time together.
This experience has helped me grow in so many ways, and it allowed me the opportunity to explore outside of my comfort zone despite the fact that I couldn’t achieve my dream of studying in Spain. As a group, we are becoming so much more than friends. These people are now my family.
Here I am, one year away from graduating with a Civil Engineering degree, and thanks to the people who I met along the way, I will be leaving this university with more experiences and skills than I had ever planned for myself.
