The moment Edward (EJ) Lawrence Jr, 17, walked through the door he was family, even though he couldn’t speak a word of his new family’s language.This summer Mr Lawrence stayed with two host families in Jordan as part of a programme called Where There Be Dragons that sends small groups of students on learning adventures in developing parts of the world.Mr Lawrence is currently in his last year at the Dublin School in Dublin, New Hampshire and is the son of Michele and Edward Lawrence. He took part in the programme to further his interest in religion and the Arabic language.The four-week experience included camel rides, trips to Bedouin camps, desert treks, and home stays with families in rural and urban Jordan.“It was an interesting experience,” said Mr Lawrence. “To get to our rural homestay, in Disi, I travelled with my instructor and several other guys in the back of a pickup truck. The truck stopped and the instructor told me to get out and walk into the house. Everyone was speaking Arabic and they were incredibly happy to see me. They were just sitting on the couch and talking to me and were incredibly kind.”At first he was bewildered by the language barrier. He didn’t speak any Arabic and only one member of his rural host family spoke any English. For the first couple of days Mr Lawrence avoided conversation, but as the days went by he did start to pick up some Arabic.“It was a lot different than I expected,” he said. “They had fridges, showers and smart phones. Their definition of rural was different than ours. Everything surprised me.”He was considered part of the family. This meant female members didn’t have to leave when he entered a room, or wear their head scarves around him as they normally would.“After the urban home stay we came back to say hello to my rural family, and found out they were very sad to see me go,” he said. “That really touched the heart strings.”His rural host mother treated him as her own son and wouldn’t let him lift a finger around the house. It was Ramadan, a time of fasting in the Muslim faith, but his host mother would not let him fast.“She thought I was too thin,” said Mr Lawrence. “I would tell her I was going to fast and she would still make me breakfast anyway.”He said the gender dynamics of Muslim culture definitely took some adjusting to. At one point in Jordan the study group stayed in a Bedouin camp. As they walked towards the camp men and women had to divide up. In the Bedouin tents, men and women were separated by a white sheet.“It was strange, because you could still hear what the women were saying,” said Mr Lawrence. “The girls had to skin a chicken and help with making dinner. They definitely had a different experience than the boys. Some of them had to do a lot more housework with their host families than the boys did. A lot of times the men in the house would not be helpful and the women would do all the work. That is not the case for every family, of course.”In addition to the home stays, the Where There be Dragons group also spent two days walking across the Wadi Rum desert. Mr Lawrence found this to be very challenging.“Every two hours I was so exhausted and wanted to take a break,” he said. “We tried to sit in the shade, but we would have to move every few minutes as the shade would move. You could drink three litres of water and still be dehydrated. The hottest it got was 102F. When you are in Bermuda everything is so watery it is so easy to breathe. In the desert it was so dry it felt like the air was being taken out of my lungs.”The Where There Be Dragons programme emphasises the difference between travellers and tourists.“When you are a traveller you meet new people and learn about the culture to a much greater degree,” Mr Lawrence said. “When you are a tourist you come there to see specific things, and don’t get to experience the culture.”Mr Lawrence said he would definitely go back to Jordan someday. He hopes to eventually study Arabic and the university level, although he has not yet decided what degree he wants to pursue when high school is finished.“I wanted to study a language that was harder to find in the United States and Europe,” he said. “I thought Arabic would be fun. It is hard to learn. To start, they have three different H sounds. It took me about two weeks to start recognising the difference between them.”To learn more about the programme see www.wheretherebedragons.com.