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By Emily Duffelmeyer
Ann Arbor, Michigan
When I was eight years old, my dad gave me a block of clay for my birthday. "There is something buried inside," he explained. "Dig it out, and then put the pieces back together." Many hours of patient "excavating" at the dining room table--and many more with a bottle of super-glue--yielded a "Roman" vase. Thus began my passion for archaeology.
Fourteen years later as a classics major specializing in archaeology, I still like digging in the dirt. It was through archaeology, and specifically because of two field seasons spent in Israel/Palestine with a team from Macalester, that I became interested in the Middle East. As my academic focus has broadened to include modern Middle Eastern history, languages and cultures, so have my experiences at Mac.
My visit to the region--and my first time outside the United States--was the summer before my sophmore year. I worked as a volunteer on Macalester's archaeological dig at Omrit, in Northern Israel. Every day for a month, starting at 4:30 a.m., our team worked to uncover, document and interpret the ancient architecture and artifacts at the site. Because I found the excavations so challenging and rewarding, I volunteered again the following summer. For me, archaeology is the perfect exercise in intellectual and physical flexibility and the ultimate test of patience.
Other travels in the Middle East include a semester abroad in Morocco. I studied Arabic intensively, lived with a family in the Rabat medina (Arabic for "old city"), and conducted independent research. My cultural learning experiences in Morocco were richly textured: my memories of the semester evoke the smell of couscous steaming, the sound of the prayer call, the bustle of the souqw on Saturday mornings, and the quiet of the Sahara.
After my semester abroad, I spent the summer in Washington, D.C. I interned at The Middle East Institute (MEI), a non-profit devoted to fostering cross-cultural understanding between the U.S. and the Middle East. My summer at MEI was a springboard into my senior year. Returning to Mac in September, I had the great opportunity to lend a hand in Macalester's Mideast Peace Summit. The high-profile event brought together former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, a well-known peace negotiator and peace advocates Sari Nusseibeh, a prominent Palestinian intellectual, and Ami Ayalon, the former director of Israeli internal security, to discuss the prospect of Arab-Israeli Peace. The day of the summit was a series of "once-in-a-lifetime" moments for me. That morning, I flew with Professor Andy Overman to Maine to pick up Sen. Mitchell. Visiting with him on the way back to St. Paul, attending the summit and meeting the panelists at a dinner following the event are experiences that I will never forget.
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