I THOUGHT THIS WAS the city that never sleeps?” Yumna Kassim marveled. “Compared to Cairo, New York seems quiet and asleep in the middle of the afternoon!”

Hard to believe the Big Apple could come as a letdown, but for at least one of the six students enrolled in the American University in Cairo (AUC) course Writing on the Road: Discovering America, the Manhattan skyline apparently fell short of her expectations. The students were, in a sense, pioneers — not only was it their first visit to the United States, but the January 2007 Journalism 299 course was also AUC’s first effort to send Egyptians to study in a country that sends so many students to the Cairo campus.

We started thinking about this and we said, ‘Wait a minute. If we’re training journalism students to international standards of journalism, why aren’t we taking them abroad?’ So we designed our first course to take the students to New York, Washington and North Carolina.

The result, Writing on the Road, was a three-week study abroad experience, the first of its kind for the AUC journalism and mass communication department.

It was uncharted territory not just for the students, but for AUC as a university as well. We were, in January [2007], one of the first two or three trips that ever went from AUC to the United States. We get absolutely tons of American students in particular applying to come to AUC, but we sent very, very few students abroad — less than a tenth of what we got, at the maximum 50 students.

“There is enormous potential to expand these courses,” says Cyrus Reed, AUC’s associate provost for international programs. “They provide faculty with a new teaching opportunity that is immediate and intensive and where they can literally see students change in a short period of time. It’s also a terrific experiential learning opportunity for [the students]. It’s a very gratifying experience for everyone involved.”

Commuting by subways and trains, the AUCians got to see all sides of America, not just its rich and famous.

In designing the course, we called upon the movers and shakers of the media world. The object was really three-pronged: introduce the students to the top journalism schools, the top journalism organizations and top journalists.

The students — Mohamed Al-Asmar, Amina Baghat, Hend Khalil, Mehri Khalil (no relation to Hend) and Perihan Saleh, as well as Kassim — did just that, stopping in New York City, Washington, DC and Chapel Hill, North Carolina to meet top journalists, diplomats and scholars as well as their counterparts at Columbia University, Northwestern University, the University of North Carolina and Duke University. In between all of this, they prepared for interviews and kept blogs on the trip.

“I speak the language with an American accent, yet I’ve never lived in the States,” Saleh wrote at the beginning of her trip. “I gained a lot of traits and traditions from Americans although I am not an American citizen, so I am thrilled to finally see the life I know but never saw and live the life I never lived.”

Things perked up once the students saw the lights of Times Square. “I finally felt like we were in New York City, where even though it was around 9pm, everyone was still awake, the lights made the area as bright as day and music played by two men with a hat for pennies — filled the air,” said freshman Kassim. “The population was so diverse that you could get people from every single city in the world. The diversity here is a lot different than in Egypt, where tourists represent a minority, and most people speak just one language.”

Compared to a presidential palace, the students found the White House unassuming and accessible.

“I was surprised that the [American immigrant] melting pot really existed,” said sophomore Mehri Khalil. “I heard English in the streets, but also French, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese and so many other languages, [] but I was also shocked that most immigrants had lower-class jobs [like] doormen and taxi drivers. They were either from Arab or Asian countries.”

As part of their academic activities, the students met with the dean of Columbia University’s School of Journalism in the room where the Pulitzer Prizes are judged and awarded. They also toured the New York Times newsroom and spent more than an hour ensconced in the editors’ conference room, talking with Deputy Foreign Editor Ethan Bronner on the paper’s policies, standards and coverage of the Middle East. “People would kill to be in here,” said Saleh of the room where the paper’s daily contents and layout are determined.

The young Egyptians took on America like Americans, not tourists. They took subways, buses and trains everywhere, and in doing so, saw the US in a way that few first-time visitors do. Particularly in New York, however, maybe because it was the first stop, many of their first impressions were compared with — and confused by — what they had seen in movies.

“The glamorous Manhattan skyline [] is both breathtaking and quite familiar,” Baghat, a junior, wrote, “and seeing it drove me to [a] still-tentative theory that if you watch enough TV, you will never feel too lost in America! This is a theory I hope to examine in the next few days: How truthful is the media in its portrayal of the United States anyway?”

Perhaps not as truthful as she hoped. Their first Chinese food near the hotel on the Upper West Side for example, prompted Baghat to ask her professors, “That was good, but when do we get real Chinese food? You know, the kind in the white cardboard boxes with the metal handles, like they eat on Friends?”

The students got a taste of small-town life at North Carolina’s Duke University.

“It was the first time for me to see hotdog and pretzel stands in real life and it felt like it was a movie,” said Saleh.

Those hotdog stands caused a moment of cultural panic for us as instructors: we were worried that the Muslims might take an inadvertent bite into a pork-filled frankfurter — assuming any of the students could bear to take off their gloves in January’s bone-chilling cold. The American melting pot came to the rescue, as many of the hotdog carts in NYC are manned by Egyptian immigrants, who took one look at their shivering countrymen, proudly produced their all-beef dogs and asked for news of home. Maa asalamas were exchanged all around, from the Staten Island Ferry through the Wall Street canyons to the Empire State Building in midtown Manhattan.

New York’s subways were also a rich source of adventure.

“An elderly man was giving me his back and trying to poke me. When I finally turned, he said, ‘I just want to see your face’!” Mehri Khalil wrote. “When we began talking, he said he was surprised I was Egyptian because I was ‘so white.’ He told me that I must be Coptic and when I said I wasn’t, he said, ‘Well, you don’t look Muslim!’ The man seemed poor but had a lot of information. He knew there was an American university in Beirut and that Egypt was populated with some Copts [] He asked if the dress code was strict in Egypt. (Later) he began thinking about what I was saying, which pleased me because I might have changed his perception of Egypt or maybe even the Middle East.”

But conversation with the doorman in their hotel, who promised them the “real story about what’s going on in America” as they politely sat in the lobby to listen, didn’t turn out so well. When he started into worldwide conspiracies by Freemasons, the students realized something was off-kilter. As Hend Khalil put it, “Today I learned that one should never believe the media — or the doorman — before researching for evidence about what they are saying or claiming.”

Traveling south from New York by train brought new revelations as the students got their first glimpses outside the Big Apple.

“Like an unfolding film, I slowly saw the landscape change from the legendary skyline of New York to the much humbler empty warehouses of New Jersey, previously the industrial heart of the American Dream, to the famous city of Philadelphia and its more metropolitan buildings,” Baghat wrote. “Everything gradually grew calmer, less hectic. I saw towns that were by no means fancy, but very simple, with small rowhouses and shops, and I also saw shabby towns, which would startle most Egyptians, who associate the United States with advanced technology and luxury. I think [the issue of] poverty is neglected because the country is generally perceived as well-off.”

This poverty in the land of supposed affluence had also struck Mehri Khalil in New York. “It was a bit astonishing to see there was a lot of poverty [] There were a lot of poor areas. Beggars in the street are in a very poor state; they’re not only hungry, but extremely cold too.”

The US capital also had its share of surprises for the students. “Compared to New York City, Washington is so quiet and simple!” Mehri Khalil said. “I thought I really liked New York, but Washington is the type of place I would really like to live in. The pace is much slower here.”

“I prefer the looks of the small, short buildings in Washington,” Hend Khalil added. “One can still see the sky without having to break his neck, and the view of the city appears so much clearer than the one in New York.”

In Washington, DC, Egyptian Ambassador to the US Nabil Fahmy made them proud to be Egyptian, a feeling soon dispelled when the embassy security guard, who spoke only Arabic, refused to let the group out of the embassy after the ambassador left. It seems the guard had been told a taxi had been ordered for the group, and he didn’t want them to leave without it. As it turned out, a taxi had not been ordered, so the students eventually convinced the guard they could hail one from the street.

The students also met former AUCian Amira El-Gawly, who took them through The Washington Post’s online news operation, where she took up work as an editor a year after graduating. AUC Professor Emeritus Abdallah Schleifer showed them Al-Arabiya’s Washington operations and hosted lunch and a tour of the National Press Club. The six also sat in on classes at the Washington newsroom of the Medill School of Journalism, a satellite campus of Chicago’s Northwestern University, watching graduate students sort out the day’s coverage of a major breaking story for real-life newspaper and TV clients.

Of the many sights and scenes in Washington, one made a particularly strong impression on the students: a woman sitting outside the White House fence in a handmade shelter, surrounded by posters that compared President George Bush to Osama bin Laden.

“This woman, stationed directly outside the White House, was allowed to stand there and express her frustration,” Kassim said. “Compare that to Egypt, and you may find that this woman would probably have been in jail before the next day’s sun was up.”

We tried to explain about freedom of speech and the woman’s right to protest, but the students insisted the woman would be arrested and taken away in the night. So the next morning, we had to make a loop around in front of the White House to show them that, yes, she was in fact still there.

“This scene was a living example, the fruit of the great leaders of this country,” Al-Asmar noted. “This was freedom, this was democracy. Maybe the United States now is not ruled by a great leader, at least from my perspective, but one should admire the infrastructure of a nation that is built on real roots, that will not vanish [because of one] leader or president.”

The White House itself, which allows visitors close access with little noticeable security, reinforced the point. “When we finally did see this legendary landmark, our jaws dropped, but not because it was breathtaking and not because it was massive,” Baghat said. “The White House is, compared to everything else American, disappointingly tiny and by no means a ‘presidential palace’ but rather quite ordinary [] It is easily humbled next to the overly lavish mansions of our Arab leaders and their obvious affinity for grandeur.

“I soon realized the significance behind the appearance of the White House and its presence within the reach of the people. I find it builds trust between the people and their government [and] implies the respect of the people, representing the concept that the government is there to serve the people and the president is an employee of the state who was chosen by the people. There’s a name for that: democracy. Why can’t Arab leaders face their people?”

It was a profound experience for Al-Asmar. “In our eyes as explorers of this country, and specifically of this city, why aren’t our capitals like this?” he mused. “Cairo was built way before Washington DC, but Cairo in comparison to DC is like the cycle of life going from the East to the West. Is it that our time has gone and now it’s the West’s turn?”

Geopolitics aside, it was in Washington that the group began to bond. Staying in a cozy bed and breakfast inn — another first for all of them — in the capital’s trendy Adams-Morgan area, they finally got their Chinese food in little white cartons and sat up in the living room watching Sex in the City reruns — “a little reminder of our dear New York,” explained Mehri Khalil.

On the way to pick up the ‘real’ Chinese food, Al-Asmar and Mehri Khalil stopped at a nearby Lebanese restaurant whose manager recognized that Al-Asmar was Palestinian.

“He was very nice to us, and it made us think about how Arabs are friendly with each other outside their countries,” Khalil said. “He also didn’t want us to pay the full price because we are students and he didn’t want us to finish our money. This solidarity is something that characterizes Arabs, I think. This warm and hospitable personality made us realize that this man must give a good impression of his country to Americans.”

Traveling by train farther south, from Washington to Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, was another adventure. While visiting the University of North Carolina and Duke University, the AUCians met more students, had their first home-cooked meal, attended a church service and talked to professors in both Duke’s Islamic studies courses and the University of North Carolina’s journalism program at Chapel Hill.

“Washington was already quite simple compared to New York, but compared to Washington, Chapel Hill is a tiny town,” said Mehri Khalil. “Everything is so slow here, even the way people walk, talk and act. Their ATM machine is also slow. This is not a joke!”

Baghat was enchanted — almost. “I might have fallen in love with the nature surrounding Chapel Hill, but I have made the sad discovery that if you do not own a vehicle, you will have to stay put and will not be able to travel far, which is important since everything is so far apart. The downside of suburbia, I think.”

After their experiences at AUC, the students were staggered by the size of both the University of North Carolina and Duke University campuses and the lack of security on them. Saleh particularly noted all the students wearing clothing that identified their school in contrast to AUCians who rarely buy school merchandise, while Al-Asmar keyed in on the prevalence of sports on both campuses: “Among 10 students, there must be at least two of them either running or wearing training suits on their way to do sports.”

Several of the students had asked to attend a church service at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Hillsborough, a restored eighteenth-century village near Chapel Hill.

“The church service was indeed unbelievable. It was a time to spread respect, smiles and originality across a community connected by faith,” Kassim wrote about the experience. “Their singing voices seemed to come from deep inside them, and many seemed to believe and value every single word being read or sung [] Church to them represents just about the same thing a mosque means to us [] except the church offered a greater chance for socialization and mixing with the community where the mosque represents an area for focusing on your relationship and dedication to God and only God.”

Saleh was impressed by the parishioners. “I sat next to an elderly man who helped Dr. Brooke and me find the necessary pages for the ceremony. It was nice how people were understanding and patient with us, instead of being insulted or offended because we didn’t know much about their religion. They also did not question our [presence] in their church.”

The AUCians sat in on classes with renowned Duke University professors such as Miriam Cooke, a professor of Asian and African languages and literature and author of Yahya Haqqi, Anatomy of an Egyptian Intellectual, and her husband Bruce Lawrence, a professor of religion and author of Shattering the Myth: Islam Beyond Violence.

“I was impressed by the information Duke students have about our media while we, on the other hand, weren’t as informed about theirs,” said Al-Asmar. “That raises a question: Why is it always that the opposition side studies us very well and is prepared while we as Arabs are not?”

Some assumptions, however, horrified the group. “I was shocked by a student’s comment when she asked why our news is so graphic and whether it was because we were used to violent scenes,” Hend Khalil wrote. “I think this is pure ignorance or simply insensitivity because no one is used to what is happening in the world today!”

In North Carolina the students got their first taste of home, American style, with a visit to the Cooke-Lawrence home after church services, followed by a visit with Betty Eidenier, mother of Emily Eidenier, a former AUC assistant librarian for Forced Migration and Refugee Studies. Perhaps most important to students who had been away from home for nearly three weeks, “I felt like I was at home with the home-cooked meal Betty made us,” said Mehri Khalil. “Frankly, I was so happy to be there. She showed us around her house and made us feel welcome [] It was very cozy.”

Final score: Americans — “so open, nice and warm” — were a hit, but many questions still remain, including this one from Baghat. “Seeing all these facets of America also makes me wonder about the fabric that connects them all to one another. How do Americans all identify with each other? America is such a massive country with so many different flavors, but one has the sense that, as Americans, the people are all connected. What is this mysterious ability that their culture has to accommodate the endless myriad of backgrounds and origins that constitutes the American demographic, yet gradually overpower them all at once?”

And then there’s what they brought back.

“It is the first time that I’ve realized how much I cherish Egypt, and I really want to learn so much more about it,” said Mehri Khalil, reflecting on what she hoped she had accomplished on the trip. “I hope I changed at least one person’s point of view, on any subject. Maybe the elderly man on the subway, or maybe a person from our group. I’m convinced that people always influence each other, even if it is unnoticeable. We all shape each other’s personalities.”

E ducation does not happen in a vacuum, something journalism professor Janet Key and writing instructor Brook Comer quickly realized when they sat down to create the Writing on the Road course. But the trip was an eye-opening experience not only for the students, but for the instructors as well.

“It’s really intense because you’re with these students and they’re with you to be fair about it, 24-7. But you really do get to know them and you really do get to help them experience stuff,” says Key, who is also the managing director for the Caravan, AUC’s student newspaper. “[T]he students were kind of astounded that they didn’t have any problems. They had no visa problems, they didn’t have any problems on the streets and I was really proud of that.

“I think they were expecting to be at least looked askance at, if not directly labeled ‘terrorist,’” Key continues. “You know, the United States’ image is not very good in this part of the world, and I think they were a little afraid that people would reflect that and not want to see them.”

As the students found out, nothing was further from the truth. “One of the things that I think that astounded them at Columbia, [] the dean of the School of Journalism and all of his associate deans [] sat down and said to the kids, ‘Y’know, we really want Middle Eastern students in this university. [] We need to understand your part of the world. We don’t have any people who do that, so we need people like you’.”

The dean lived up to his word. In May 2007, the Columbia School of Journalism invited and almost fully funded the Caravan editor-in-chief to attend a workshop for college newspaper editors. “There are really positive spin-offs that we’ve gotten here,” Key says.

Perhaps the most positive spin-off is how the students have expanded their horizons. “What I see is kids who are infinitely more aware of the world around them,” Key says, “and one of the things I like to see as a journalist is that they’ve gotten beyond some of their stereotypes and biases.”

Over the summer 2007, Key, who has been living in Egypt for seven years, and Comer, who has been in Egypt on and off for 10 years, took a second group of six students on a four-week trip through California; the instructors are planning a third trip for summer 2008. Key says that the first Journalism 299 students still stop by her office to chat. “They are the reason really that we had the second trip, because it was their enthusiasm and talking to the other kids [] that really sold the trip.”

Cyrus Reed, the university’s associate provost for international programs, says the “path-breaking” work in the two Writing on the Road courses was instrumental in efforts to expand the study-abroad program in 2008. “Courses like that are what it’s all about,” he says.

AUC has also sent students abroad for a dialogue course on Cyprus and a drawing course in Barcelona. New courses being considered for the January and summer breaks include a theater tour to London, a cultural tour of St. Petersburg, Russia, and a photography and writing course in Tanzania and Kenya.

T he “sleeper” hit of the January 2007 trip was 82-year-old Al Maysles who, with his brother David, developed so-called “direct cinema,” a straight-on, no-interference style of filmmaking. Picking up where Europe’s cinema verite left off, the film style resonated worldwide in such classics as Gimme Shelter (1970), Salesman (1968) and Grey Gardens (1975). His more recent documentaries include Sally Gross: The Pleasure of Stillness (2007) and Stolen (2006).

Sitting with him in his Harlem townhouse, students were instantly drawn to Maysles’ relaxed warmth, and were impressed that the New Yorker still has at least 20 years of film projects lined up, including one on Yusuf Islam’s (formerly 70s folk music icon Cat Stevens) return to performing.

“I was surprised that a man of his age would have all this energy for making films. He has plans for films that will take him years and he is still making more plans and not letting age get in his way,” said Perihan Saleh. “This was very motivating, this holding on to the things you love in life.”

The meeting with the Jewish filmmaker was particularly poignant for Mohamed Al-Asmar, a broadcast major of Palestinian origin.

“‘Until now, I have no idea what goes on in the mind and heart of a Palestinian,’ were some of the first words he spoke to me,” Al-Asmar recalled. “What goes on in the mind and heart of a Palestinian can be expressed in many ways and forms — documentary films are one way, letters, words, even a smile or a tear — but [what] makes it all that meaningful is the touch of a poet like Al Maysles.

“He told me, ‘If it’s true, then it’s real. And if it’s real, then it’s filmable.’ That’s the first advice I will take with me in my broadcasting career,” Al-Asmar continued.

But meeting Maysles meant more than just professional advice for the upcoming journalists. “The most important part of the day [] was being able to place a picture or reality to the word ‘Jew,’ used and described and pictured so often in the media but so different from what I saw today,” said Yumna Kassim.

“Al Maysles was the highlight of this trip. I learned a lot from the words of this man,” said Al-Asmar. “Two hours in his house opened the path for me to think more about everything I know and want to know.”

F ar from being overly polite, ‘gee whiz’ witnesses, the students actively participated with sharp questions and sometimes even sharper give-and-take in their interviews and media tours. At one point, they realized that they were being ‘set up’ by Al-Arabiya talk show host Lukman Ahmed. It was to be, he said, just a ‘little chat,’ but he gave them no specifics about what he wanted to talk about on the show.

“As the interview progressed, we began to realize that Mr. Lukman was phrasing the questions in a way that would make us seem like a ‘lost generation,’ stranded by globalization, with no sufficient knowledge of our country [and] insufficiently loyal,” Baghat recalled.

Kassim continued: “He asked us what music each one of us liked to listen to and what sports we liked to play. Based on our answers to these very basic questions, he decided that our generation does not have a good relationship to previous ones.”

When Ahmed couldn’t answer sophomore Al-Asmar’s question about what he, as an Arab journalist living in the US, would recommend as a remedy, the TV presenter asked Hend Khalil to sing. The 19-year-old, who sings in the choir of the German Evangelical Church even though she is Muslim, began singing a traditional Arabic song so beautifully that Lukman leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees and closed his eyes. Hend to the rescue! et