2/19/2008 - Visiting Egyptian Student Adjusting to Life Downeast
Cyndi Wood
The Ellsworth American
ELLSWORTH — When Aly Gaballa arrived in the United States, he was shocked to find that Americans take “no” for an answer.
The 16-year-old from Cairo said it was one of the first and most glaring cultural differences he noticed upon coming to this country.
“In Egypt, when someone offers you something, you have to say ‘no’ three times,” Gaballa explained. “Here, when someone offered me a hamburger and I’d say ‘no,’ they’d be like ‘OK.’”
Gaballa came to Maine in August to spend a year as part of the American Field Service program.
AFS offers student programs in more than 50 countries. Gaballa is spending this year as a junior at Ellsworth High School.
He flew into Washington, D.C., on Aug. 8 and after program orientation, traveled to Maine by bus. Host parents Bill and Molly Webster of Ellsworth met him at the bus station.
Bill Webster is superintendent of Union 96. Molly is an intensive care nurse.
Small town Maine was quite a change from Egypt’s busy capital, but a welcome one for Gaballa.
“I didn’t want to live in another city,” he said. “I was ready for something new.”
Gaballa lived in Tokyo for four years while his father, a journalist, was working as an Asia correspondent.
His father is now editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram, a popular Middle Eastern newspaper. His mother works for a society that promotes education and literacy.
Gaballa said that one of his primary reasons for coming to the United States was to help people understand what a typical Egyptian teenager is like.
He encourages people to ask him questions and has had some interesting requests.
“People have asked me if we live in pyramids,” Gaballa said with a smile as he sat in the Websters’ parlor. “Somebody even asked me if I had a relative that was mummified.”
People are also curious about the Islamic religion.
Gaballa is Muslim, but he says that, like many Egyptians, he defines himself as “not very conservative.” Like many people who identify as Christian despite seldom attending church, Gaballa does not regularly go to mosque and doesn’t pray five times daily.
“If I want to pray, I can just do it in my room,” he said.
The teenager welcomes the opportunity to teach people about his religious and cultural customs. It is also a good way to meet new people, he said.
Adjusting to American life was difficult at first. Although his English sounds perfect, the native-Arabic speaker said he struggled with language differences early on.
Luckily, he had years of formal training.
“It’s really a second language in Egypt,” he said, adding that students typically start studying it in first grade.
His host family also had some adjusting to do.
“It’s been an education for us and for Aly,” Bill Webster said of his experience as a host parent.
This is the second time Webster and wife, Molly, have hosted an AFS student. Two years ago, when the family was living in Brunswick, they hosted a Norwegian girl.
Daughter Caroline studied for a year in Austria through the program.
The experience was so rewarding they decided to try it again.
“I think it’s both a wonderful and, in some sense, a critical experience for the world to have a greater exposure to different cultures and people from different countries,” Webster said.
Host sister Elizabeth Webster, 15, said it took some getting used to having Gaballa in the house, but that he has since become “like a brother.”
“He had such a big culture shock when he came that I think sometimes it would get to the point where it just annoyed me, and I think sometimes I annoyed him,” she said.
Gaballa had to strike a balance between his life in Egypt and that in America.
Being abroad has actually made Gaballa more in tune to current events at home. He stays informed about the news and keeps up on his favorite sports teams.
“Whenever you get out of your country, you get a lot more patriotic,” he said.
An avid sports buff, Gaballa plays varsity soccer and is on the indoor track team at EHS.
He said he enjoys hanging out with friends and sampling outdoor activities during his first snowy winter.
He hopes to attend college in the United States and would like to major in international relations or political science.
“I’d like to be either a diplomat or an ambassador,” he said.
Gaballa will return to Egypt in early June.
This article was originally published here.
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