Conversation Partner – Meeting One (10/18/12)

            Well, it finally happened. After months of hit and miss scheduling and last second cancellations by each party, Alya and I finally met. Alya Almoosa is a 27-year student from Saudi Arabia. She is married and has two children with her husband, who is also with her in the United States. Their daughter is two, and their son is four. We decided to meet at the coffee shop in the first story of the BLUU. I arrived at 2:00 for our 2:30 meeting. As I should have expected from our history so far as conversation partners, we finally met at 3:00 and decided to move to a table in 1873 Café and Sports Grill, where it was less crowded and noisy. After a few minutes of awkward conversation starters, Alya and I began to become more comfortable around each other. She is shy at first, but she became increasingly more amiable as the conversation progressed. She informed me that both her and her husband are in the same ESL classes, English as a Second Language, and that she plans to get her masters in information systems as soon as she passes the TOEFL, a test that measures one’s ability to use and understand English. Her husband plans on getting his MBA.

            They are both currently level four, out of five, in their ESL classes, meaning they are almost complete. It is hard to recall now how our conversation flowed, but it was certainly sporadic. I learned she was one of eight children, she wanted more children, she did not like Oklahoma when she visited her friend, and Texas was not as bad as she expected. When I asked her if she thought we rode horses to school, she replied no. She assumed we did not just like she did not ride a camel to school when she was in Saudi Arabia. Apparently, Texans are not the only group of people who are bombarded with asinine questions, especially as kids. I found Alya informative and very friendly, and I am looking forward to our conversations in the future. I told her I will eventually ask her about Saudi Arabian humor in order to give her time to think a little about it. I do not think I’ll be disappointed. One meeting down, seven to go!