Drum roll please…I’m back!

Salam Alaykum (Peace be upon you)

Well, I haven’t exactly been the most faithful blogger, since it’s been over three months since I last wrote (wow, has it really been that long?), but I promise to make it up!

My summer this year was pretty hectic. I traveled to Dubai (for shopping lol), Mecca & Medina (in Saudi Arabia for ‘umra’—the lesser pilgrimage), Alexandria (for the sea!), Copenhagen & Arhus (in Denmark for a conference), and finally to Birmingham & London (in England for a summer training program).

I traveled to England for approximately a month for a summer training program with Amr Khaled, the well known Muslim TV preacher. We camped in Gilwill Park, and Lake District, and I got a chance to do things I’d never done before (e.g. sleep in tents, wash dishes etc). We dormed in Solihull College in Birmingham for 2 weeks, where we had trainings every other day like how to manage your time, how to be a leader etc. The funny thing about the camp is that Amr Khaled then made a TV program about it that airs on El-Mehwar (a satellite channel), every day in Ramadan right after iftar (so around 6:30pm), and he chose 5 of the 100 camp participants to come on every day to talk about that day’s episode. 4 guys, 1 girl. Guess who the girl was? Yours truly. So every day I’m on TV, and I’ve realized that 1000’s of people watch the show (random people stop me on campus to ask “are you the girl on the show?;” I speak way too fast; and that I really should have slept the night we filmed because I look soooooo tired on film.

But moving on, what else have I done since I started university? Oh, I joined the YALDA conference at the very beginning of the semester (Youth Alliance for Leadership and Development), and it was a very interesting experience. I got to go see the pyramids, which I’ve only been once to when I was in second grade

I’m also now editor-in-chief of Dimensions, which is definitely no easy job. I swear I’ve been spending more time working on it than I have on my courses, which isn’t really good because I’m graduating this semester and can’t really afford to have my GPA drop. Nevertheless, it’s an extremely rewarding job, we’ve managed to develop the paper so much and have doubled our crew. Today is a landmark event in the history of Dimensions—it’s the first time we’ve EVER produced two issues in two consecutive weeks, and we’re hoping to finally become a weekly newspaper rather than a biweekly one. And inshallah (God willing) we will be! Here’s a picture of (some) of my lovely crew having iftar in Bon Appetit (the only good restaurant close to AUC. I have eaten so many chicken barbecue sandwiches I’m going to sprout wings soon lol).

Now I have to go assign the stories for the next issue!
Until next time,
Salam Alaykum,
Ethar