At the end of last spring semester, I was blessed with the opportunity to study Arabic in Oman, a country in the Arabian Peninsula, bordering the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. I applied for and won two awards, the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship and the Queens College Study Abroad scholarship, to study the Arabic language at the Center for International Learning in Muscat, Oman. I am forever indebted to Professors Lan Kim (Korean), Hala Abdelghany (Arabic) and Serenity Young (Asian History), for their recommendations. I wouldn’t have been able to win without their recommendations. My essay would never have been…