By Razan Alaqil, YES 2014-2015, Saudi Arabia, hosted by FLAG in Marion, NC

Getting up for school seemed to get harder as the holiday break got closer, but the joy that filled the school's hallways was indescribable. Everyone wore a new outfit. The students carried gift bags that had surprises inside of them for their friends. Each class had food to celebrate this great holiday. Some hallways echoed with the sound of Christmas music, and even the books displayed in the Media Center were holiday-themed; it seemed like the Christmas spirit taking over everything.

I even heard Santa, yes, Santa! "Ho, Ho, Ho, Merry Christmas!" I walked searching for him, and luckily he was taking pictures with some people. I waited for my turn, and took a picture with him. I've never celebrated Christmas before, so you can imagine how special my very first picture with Santa Claus, whom I had heard about in bedtime stories and from movies that aired on western channels, was to me. I've always admired Santa because he brought joy to my five-year-old heart, and brought gifts to millions of kids around the world as they waited for the 25th of December every year.

Wrapping gifts was a little bit hard for me in the beginning, but I looked like a professional gift wrapper as I reached my tenth gift. This December has been proving a lot of things to me, which has been making me cheerful. One of them is the respect that people have towards my religion as we celebrate this holiday, but I keep on saying that I don't mind celebrating Christmas. I don't mind sharing the joy and happiness of everyone else around me, because the universe keeps on revolving by the love that mankind shares for one another. At the end, it doesn't matter where you come from, or what you believe in, because the universal love and respect shall always unite all of us in one joy.

Christmas time is about giving, loving, caring, and more. I find all of this spectacular and amazing as I go through all of these different experiences in my first Christmas, and I pray to god to keep the world like this. A place where people from different religions would celebrate with each other, not caring about the past, but only thinking about the present and the future of the next generations. We can always determine our next steps, and what I'm witnessing here is a step for a brighter future with better understandings.

I'll go back home soon, and I'll tell people about my first Christmas. I'll tell them about how I helped in decorating a Christmas tree. I'll write stories about the many gifts that I've been wrapping. I'll share my pictures in a Santa hat. I'll talk and talk, because what I'm living right now shall be the first brick of the base of my future, and the future of the youth in my community.