Hi everyone!

My name is Yara Hussein, I’m from Youngstown, Ohio and a second year student at UO. My major is Human Physiology, a minor in Arabic, and I’m currently thinking about adding Statistics as a major as well. I love being involved at school and my community as much as possible. I work at global scholars hall, volunteer at PetSmart and the University Health Center in my free time, and join clubs if I have time. Some of the clubs I have done so far is criminal justice, dance, Rotaract,  Film and DuckTV. I have two cats, Mocha and Ceaser, a hamster named Toby, and a canary bird, Sweetie. I moved here about a year ago with my family to be closer with other relatives. Most of my family lives in Syria, so we thought it was best to be close to the ones we have now.

I can’t pick one picture to communicate with ya’ll, so I am going to post a few:

The first one is my family and I, and this communicates that family is everything to me.

The second one is a picture of my cat Ceaser, this communicates my love for cats, and how my pets are basically my children,

The third picture is my friends. This picture communicates a lot of things: they’re my best friends, we go on too many spontaneous trips, we’re broke, and we got stuck on the mountain :/

And the last on is the amazing Toby. This picture communicates just how crazy he is. I really don’t know what he’s doing on the wall of the cage but I thought it was a funny picture.

One of the main factors that drives my interest for East Asian Languages and Societies is my overall interest of connecting cultures and their similarities.  Growing up Middle Eastern, culture was a very prominent in my family. A lot of the times, I would pay attention to other cultures as well to see how they differ and match with mine, and I have learned in the past that many foreign cultures are more alike than most people think.  So, with that being said, I took this class to get a better understanding of the culture of East Asian countries and see how those aspects align with other cultures and spread that knowledge to others. I always find it frustrating when people make assumptions about my culture, or just naively make comments about other people’s backgrounds in general. I hope that after taking this class, I can go about and explain to people what different cultures really embody. Another factor that I found really intriguing is that my mom has some kind of blood connection to the East Asian world (we took a DNA test). I found this very surprising because I always thought my parents were pretty much 100% Middle Eastern. We aren’t sure exactly where in the East Asian region (the area that was circled was all of East Asia, it didn’t really narrow it down to a specific country).

This was already said, but one question that I am really looking forward to answering is how East Asian cultures are similar and different to my Middle Eastern background. I want to see how similarities manifest, whether it’s directly or indirectly, and how differences emerge between the two cultures. And it’s not just Middle Eastern cultures, but many others as well. So far, the teaching methods have been quite intriguing and fun overall. I love the environment the teacher and TA sets, being really including to all backgrounds and explaining everything clearly. My approach in learning is always an open mind, for everywhere I go; class, music lessons, movies, or any discussion. I think it’s important to be open for change, and to listen to others, even if you disagree. So far, the only thing that this class has changed me is my new interest in Asian cultures. I want to dive deeper, learn about popular songs, movies, folk tales, food and everything. I am even taking interest in learning a new language (leaning towards Japanese, not sure yet). With that being said, I am enjoying this class so much, and I can’t wait for future projects and topics we will be discussing 🙂