Alaa, Egypt

My dream is to be an international writer …I prefer fiction,drama and romance but a sprinkle of tragedy every now and then is craved(everyone needs a good cry) however I am a sucker for happy endings.  I want to travel the world see every countries’ uniqe tourist attractions and experice their special foods and traditions.  I belive that by knowing the people’s hearts I could write about the lives they lead.  My second fav passion is photography I want to be a part time photographer with creativity as my ally.  Though all the things I like more on the creative side my upcoming career is far from that(it is more scientific actually).  I love to dance and read.  I want and hopefully going to try every extreme sport ever made.I am a perfectionist and I belive that if i want to live life to its exstent I have to try everything it has to offer.It might be true it might be not …but I only have one life to live so I will take my chances ….

Abeer: Muscat, Oman

This is a picture of my deceased father.  Whoever I am today is due to my father, he helped me build my personality and my principles in life.  Dealing with guys, I have no problem with that.  Most girls are shy, they don’t want to talk to guys, but I have no problem.  I was raised so close to my father and he was the kind of man that everyone was afraid of because he was so strict.  But he showed me his soft side.  So I learned this principle in life that every man has this soft side.

I have to bring the nicest smile to everyone’s life so that the person next to me can show his soft side.  Because in our culture, the men keep their emotions inside, they don’t express them, so I would like to be a person they can speak to.  When I met these guys here at school I learned a lot about how men think and what things we have in common

Personally I keep his picture because he is the only man that I have known that he truly loved me.   Although he passed away ten years ago, I still feel like he is with me.  I carry his picture to remind me of who I am and what I have to do in life.  Sometimes I feel burdened by responsibilities, but he is guiding me in my life, I know what I am going to do and who I am going to be.  Unlike some girls my age, I feel like I have already found myself.

Abdullah: Muscat, Oman

This is a picture of myself and other actors.  I am interested in acting and writing plays and directing plays.  This is a play that I wrote with two other members of the English and Translation Society, “At the Mercy of the Military.”  I acted as a surgeon in the play; you can see my picture here.

This is my interest.  I know it is not related to our traditions in Oman because many people think that it is not cool for boys and girls to act together.  Our religion says that boys and girls should not combine together freely.  Here in school we act together, but some people think this isn’t nice.  We did Romeo and Juliet but of course the women actors covered themselves with scarves because it is not allowed for them to be in public without it.

I started acting when I was 13 years old or so and I acted in Arabic.  When I came to university I started writing and acting in English.  I am proud of this play because I wrote the play and acted in it.  My father was a teacher and he knew a lot about drama so my parents are ok with my interest.  Hopefully I can evoke something new in drama in the future.

Mohammed:  Muscat, Oman

I have chosen the laptop to be the special thing in my life because I use it everyday.  Technology is overcoming everything in life and I use the laptop to do many things, including editing movies.  I have made four or five movies.  The last one was about Omani culture.  One of them was about regions of Oman and another one was about the ruler of Oman, Sultan Qaboos.  I made a movie about Syrian culture, their foods and their experience. I also made a movie about a trip we took to Australia.

I use the Internet everyday. Last week I was looking for a good university to study in another country.  I am thinking of going to Australia, England, Canada, or America.  I surf international websites and also I go to Google and search how to study English.  I try to chat with others and post new methods of how to absorb English.  Also I am trying to learn the Spanish language over the Internet.  I can go anywhere by the Internet, I can connect with students all over the world through it.  It improves my English and my relationships with others.

Azza:  Muscat, Oman

This is a book for poems called Collective Thoughts.  My sister gave it to me and I have had it for 4 years.  It is special because it is a collection of poems and drawings by children who have cancer.  You can really just feel these poems when you read them, it is really wonderful and I read it everyday.

I have met the poet who put this book together.  She is an Omani volunteer and she went to Africa and India to volunteer and help children there.  I really like volunteer work so I was excited to meet her.  Last year, my colleague and I did a presentation about a volunteer project we did together.  We made a calendar of different pictures that children in the hospital made, and the profits will go back to the hospital.  The author of the book, Collective Thoughts, came to our presentation.

Now I am working on a project called “Dream Rooms” which is also for children in the hospital.  We ask them to draw pictures of how they want their room in the hospital to be.  We help them gesticulate the rooms as they want, and help them develop the psychological side.  Then we try to help make their rooms like this.

In our culture we like to help others, especially sick people.  If you see children crying and in pain, and you don’t want to help them it gives you bad feelings.  I care about cancer because some members in my family have cancer and I just want to do something for them to help them.

I think the American students have more abilities to do volunteer work because they can travel and do a lot of things without being held back by there culture or customs.  Here some of our customs prevent us from doing these things.  But it is not impossible, we can do it if we have the intention to do it.

This is a photo of my brother, Munther.  He is really important in my life and I really want him to be successful.  I hope that I am a good influence in his life.  He is really wise for his age and he isn’t just trying to be cool.  He doesn’t hurt anybody and he isn’t rude to people.

We are Palestinian and we moved here from Jordan.  Although me and my other siblings all grew up there, he is mostly growing up in the U.S.  He is a sponge sucking up everything around him, which can be confusing because we have our own culture at home and at the same time we are in this American culture.

When my husband and I have our own kids, we want them to have the culture we grew up with but we definitely we want to change some things we don’t agree with so that our kids are able to grow up and succeed in this globalized world.  Westernization is everywhere so you can’t just live in a bubble with your own culture because life out there is so diverse.

The main stereotype about the U.S. is that it is all about consumerism but not everybody is like that, just like how in Jordan not everyone is super traditional. The way people grow up sometimes causes them to choose different paths of living.

Hamood:  Muscat, Oman

The thing I am sharing may seem strange, but it is very personal to me.  This ring is Omani.  It is silver with a stone in it; it is from our culture.  This ring seems very ordinary from the surface, but indeed it is very beautiful and it has an interesting story to it.  This ring belonged to my grandfather who died in 1992.  He was able to interact with the ring in a mysterious way.  Maybe this is related to science somehow…it seems almost like it had magical powers.  He could order this ring to do things; I saw him do it.  He could order the ring to go bring something, and the ring could go and get it, and come back with that thing.  Many people came to him and asked him to teach them; even British people came and asked how he was able to do this.  He refused to teach people the secrets of the ring.

The surprising thing is that before he died, he gave this ring to a bad person, a drunk person.  Maybe he gave it to this person because he wouldn’t know how to do anything with it.   But you know, we found this ring two years ago with that person.  He gave it back to our family and I got to keep it.

I haven’t noticed anything magical about this ring; in fact it is very ordinary.  I like it very much though, because it belonged to my grandfather and he liked me very much.

Karima:  Muscat, Oman

This is my pencil.  It is really priceless for me.  The story about my pencil is that my brother went to the bookshop and he bought two pencils at the same time because he wanted to share with me the same thing.  So this was the only thing I shared with my brother that was the same thing.  We are only two, brother and sister, and he is my soul brother, so it is very priceless to me.  But, in the end, he threw his pencil away!

Before I do anything I have to go back to my pencil.  I love journalism and I am a journalist student and I use my pencil to do everything.  I write all my reports and articles with my pencil.  I never use lap-tops, I always use my pencil to write the first draft before I go to the computer.

My mother loves journalism.  She is not a writer, she’s a housewife, but she always told me to become a journalist because she always reads from the newspaper.  I love writing.  I like writing about politics, and also poems.  I am interested in international events, especially what’s going on in the USA with Obama’s election, and what is going on in Gaza right now.  I hope to work at the international level someday.  Being a journalist is important for me because it is a way to introduce myself to the world.

I brought something small to share.  It is so insignificant but I always treasure it and I don’t throw it away.  It is a bracelet that my ex-girlfriend gave me and I keep it because it has sentimental value.

My ex-girlfriend went to a Nike basketball camp in high school and she got this bracelet there.  They don’t make these anymore, it says “dream” on it.  She gave it to me and when we broke up I said I wouldn’t take it off until we got back together.

The weird thing is that it broke one day, but not long after that, she started calling me again and we ended up getting back together!  We are not together anymore though.  She is joining the Peace Corps and she wants to go experience life and I still have other stuff to do too.  I didn’t want to break up necessarily, and I will never throw this bracelet away unless we get back together or I get another girlfriend.

It’s all boys in our family, besides my mom.  I have three brothers, and even our dog is a boy.  But we have always been taught to treat women like princesses.  For us, chivalry is not dead!

This basket represents Omani handicraft.  In my village, my father has a farm and I work on it during the weekend.  That’s why, as you can see, I am handsome (joke!).  We use an old way of irrigation to water the plants and trees.  We use this tiny basket to collect coins, or perfumes or something.  But we use the bigger version of these baskets to collect dates, lemons, oranges and other things on the farm.

They make the basket using the leaves of the palm tree.  They make it by hand and braid three pieces together. The colors green, red and white represent the Omani flag.  Old men make these; I am not old enough to make them yet