So, unfortunately as it pertains to Soliya I don’t have much to say as I only attended 2 out of the 5 sessions b/c the 5 weeks of the program happened to fall in between the most congested part of my midterm schedule (I had 6 midterms, 4 of which in major courses, during the 5 weeks of Soliya). However, I did have some thoughts in those first two sessions which I attended.

Firstly, I was a bit unlucky with the composition of my group, I tried to make it as clear as possible in the initial survey that although I’m Egyptian I was born and raised in the US and so in a lot of ways I’m very culturally American, however about 80% of the members of my group were either American or Arab meaning I wasn’t really being exposed to other cultures. Of course, Arabs are not a monolith and there is a lot of cultural diversity in the Arab world, however the only non-Egyptian Arab in my group was Palestinian, which is as close to Egyptian (geographically) as you can get, and I have multiple Palestinian friends so their culture is not very foreign to me. In spite of that, I’m certain there would have been other valuable outcomes of the group’s composition had I attended more Soliya sessions. In particular, I’m sure that my particular life experiences as a dual cultural person could have helped in conversations about topics that challenge the global paradigm of the West and the Global South (like the topic of Israel). So, due to the composition of my group I was slightly disappointed, but I’m of course in no place to jump to conclusions about the effects of the group’s composition as I did not actually complete the required amount of Soliya sessions.

My other opinion I had about Soliya is that I think the discussion topics could have been slightly better in those first two sessions, but b/c my group was full of nice and charismatic people we were able to get by. Also my facilitator did a good job of managing the uncomfortable silences that were bound to occur and make sure that the conversation could keep going.

Overall, I enjoyed meeting the members of my group and the first two sessions were like social gatherings, but of course with my attendance I don’t have much else to say about Soliya.