Conversational Partner #1

Prior to meeting with my conversational partner, I was anxious as to how the conversation would carry. I didn't think much about what I would talk about because I honestly had no idea what to expect. All I knew about him was his name, which is Hussain Ali. I did not know where he was from, how old he was, what he looked like, or what any of his interests were. We had traded a few emails and texts, but they were all focused on when and where our initial meeting would be. I tried to play the potential conversation through my mind and I failed to form any sort of plan for how to approach it. Leading up to our initial meeting, all I did was hope that the conversation would flow and that I wouldn't experience an awkward conversation.

I decided to have my first meeting with Hussain at Union Grounds in the BLUU. I figured that during our first meeting we should just talk in a low pressure environment, so that we can learn a little about each other. He showed up a few minutes ahead of when we were supposed to meet, we shook hands, sat down and began our conversation. Our conversation was relatively brief, only lasting about 30 minutes, but covered a wide variety of topics. To begin, I asked him to tell me a little about himself. He explained that he was 22 years old, and was from Saudi Arabia. He explained how he had attended school in his home country for a few months, but did not enjoy it and decided to work at a few different companies before moving to the United States. Our conversation flowed for some time and while he talked I picked up on a couple things. The first thing that I noticed was that he seemed nervous whenever we first began the conversation. He was fidgeting a lot fingers and looked down while he spoke. Another thing that I noticed was how well he spoke English. One thing that I was apprehensive about prior to our meeting was that I would have a hard time understanding him because of prior experiences with people whose primary language was not English. This was not an issue at all while he was talking, and I was impressed with how he talked. Our conversation continued with a lot of back and forth questions about each other's respective lives. I hadn't thought of many questions prior to our meeting, but was able to formulate them as the conversation transpired. He talked about his family, which includes him and six other siblings. One of the questions that I gained the most insight from was when I asked what it was like in his home town of Saudi Arabia. Hussain began describing how the dynasty that currently ran his country was not fair to him or his people. When comparing their political situation to the United State's democracy, he said that "it just seems more fun here." He described how the women in the country are not allowed to drive and that they must wear particular clothing. He described how there were two groups of Islam that were constantly fighting, and continued by saying there was a lot of "racism" that ensued because of the fighting groups.

There was more too our conversation, but I wanted to highlight a couple things that stuck out to me. While talking about his family, Hussain described how his older sister moved to Ohio for college 10 years ago, and that he has not seen her since. The way he communicated this to me was surprising, because it seemed so matter-of-fact that he had not seen his sister in a decade. Another thing that stuck out to me was his disdain towards his country. This let my imagination run wild about what it would be like to live in a country that was ran by a king that I did not agree with. These thoughts are probably not unfamiliar to most people, but were something that I had never really considered.

Our first conversation was enlightening, and I look forward to the next encounter.