Teach English Study Arabic Internship

Hey everyone! My name is Sharan and I'm from Singapore, where I’m also currently in my third year of my Anthropology major. I was in the centre for the Teach English, Study Arabic Internship for 2 months.

I came to the centre with the intention of getting a foundation in Levantine Arabic while doing some meaningful work. In addition, I hoped to learn more about the socio-political situation in the immediate region by interacting with a whole range of people living here. And I did! I really really loved my time here, and am even coming back to Hebron for a while next year.

General advice:

Before arriving, I was scouring this site for any advice I could find! So I wanted to give a short write-up about the expectations you should have before arriving, so as to make your adjustment period a little easier.

If you come from an efficiency-centred culture as I do, you might need a while to adjust to the pace of living here. It’s a lot more relaxed, and there’s a lot less emphasis placed on planning (for example, I knew nothing about my homestay family before I arrived!) and scheduling. However, this gave the whole program a sort of flexibility that could really work to your benefit - during my time here, if I had a problem or needed anything, I always felt comfortable going to Marwa for assistance.

The homestay was a mixed situation for me - while I appreciated the generosity of my family, at times, I felt rather uncomfortable. That being said, as soon as Marwa found out about this, she even offered to take me into her own home! All in all, I highly recommend stating your living preferences before you come and that if you feel even slightly uncomfortable in your homestay situation when you arrive, to tell Marwa as soon as possible.

In general, travelling alone as a woman in the city does not typically put you in any immediate danger but can be rather unpleasant. Given that Hebron is the most conservative city in Palestine, men do not often approach you but will stare and maybe rather persistent in trying to speak to you. Moreover, I came without any Arabic, which made me feel more vulnerable as I was not able to communicate with taxi-drivers and did feel like I could express myself.

Once again, this is where the flexibility of the program can really benefit you! I front-loaded my Arabic classes, so I had 6 hours a week rather than the usual 3 and didn’t have classes for the second month here. By the end of that month, I felt a lot more comfortable communicating my needs and had fewer unpleasant experiences in cabs.

Moreover, I was unsure about how my experience as a brown woman would differ from the experiences written by other women in past reviews. I would say that I definitely got a lot less harassment on the street in comparison to some of my other foreign friends but sometimes gave me a bit of trouble when walking through the settlements (although this was mostly quickly resolved after showing my passport).

Final notes:

Hebron is an ideal place to be in if you’re interested in travelling across the region (which I highly recommend you do!) Palestine is ridiculously gorgeous and an entirely different landscape is typically no more than a 3-hour drive away.

I also really enjoyed getting to teach! My favourite class was one that I taught in Dura (a village in Hebron) full of intermediate students. I’ve never met a group of people, let alone students, who were so immediately loving and thoroughly excited to learn - by the end of this class, I was genuinely devastated to leave them. I learned a great deal from them.

Finally, the beauty of a program like this one is that it attracts a whole assortment of fascinating people. I am so grateful and so lucky to have met the people that I did, many of whom I would consider life-long friends. I am beyond grateful to leave this program with my own Palestinian family.