When David Azevedo was a freshman, he was a film major who wanted to tell stories. Now a junior, Azevedo has shifted his focus -- and his major -- to political science and history, specifically the Middle East. Over the summer, Azevedo got the chance to explore the region having earned a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship to study Arabic in Tunisia.

“The Middle East and the whole of the Muslim culture have always fascinated me,” says Azevedo, who is an editor of Passion Magazine, LMU’s student social justice and service publication. “Last year we had a program where we invited a rabbi and some Palestinians to discuss Israeli-Palestinian issues and it was a successful dialogue.  I love being part of the conversation.”
 
The language program in Tunisia was a challenging and engaging experience, Azevedo says. He spent about 12 hours a day either in class, studying, or on cultural excursions designed to encourage students to practice their Arabic in a real-life situations. Within weeks, he says he went from having no knowledge of Arabic to writing 100-word paragraphs.
 
Adding to his cultural experience, Azevedo lived with a host family, which he says was "wonderful and welcoming and won my heart over from the first dinner of couscous, baclava, and brik (a special Tunisian fried-egg dish)." His weekends were spent exploring Tunisia, from the tip of the Sahara Desert in the south to the mountain-forests in the north.
 
Azevedo plans to continue studying Arabic and he may take some Hebrew courses, but that will have to wait: He was named a Hansard Scholar and is spending the fall 2009 semester interning for a member of the British Parliament while taking classes in British politics, government and public policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The experience of learning a language, Azevedo says, is what most affected him. "With very little time to breathe during our rigorous schedule, the program taught me to be brutally efficient in consolidating a language that is one of the hardest for English-speakers to learn," he says. "With this experience, I know that I will have a tremendous advantage in not only continuing my Arabic but exploring other languages as well."