Conversational Partner #2

For my second meeting with Hussain, we met at the library. Initially we had planned to go to the TCU Rec and workout, but our schedules didn't allow enough time for that. We hadn't chatted much between the first and second meetings, and I was wondering where the conversation would lead. Our conversation started with talking about what we had been up to the past few weeks. He told me about how he had just finished his finals for the first two months of IEP, and so I inquired more about his class schedule and material. He told me about his classes and different assignments he was working on. One thing that caught my attention were the books that he was assigned to read, which were The Outsiders and The Old Man and the Sea. These were both books that I was assigned to read, but eight years earlier. This made me think about the different stages of learning the English language and where Hussain was in the process. After this, we delved into some more interesting conversations. He told me about his fall break plans, which included going on a hiking trip sponsored by TCU. He is going with ten other students and they will be backpacking through a mountain range for four days. This made me feel excited for him, because in our first meeting he had talked about how he struggled to meet people outside of the IEP. He sounded as if he was looking forward to it, but he seemed anxious because he didn't know anybody else on the trip. During our conversation, I wished that I could somehow go on the trip with him to make him more comfortable with the trip, but I knew that was impossible. I am confident that he will be able to make friends with those that are accompanying him because he is open to conversation and genuinely interested in what other people have to say.

            Talking about backpacking led to conversations about other outdoor events that we had each done. I tried to explain Boy Scouts to him, but I think he had a hard time comprehending that. Nonetheless, I told him about various camping and kayaking trips that he had been on, and he shared some of his own stories with me. We talked about fishing and about how that was something that he missed from Saudi Arabia, which is the first thing I have heard him say he missed. When he was home in Saudi Arabia he would fish at least once a week, and he showed me some pictures of his catches. The fished looked very different from any that I had ever caught, and he was unable to tell me the English name for the fish. We talked about different types of boats we had been on, and just talked about common experiences. This is one of the first times that we had shared a common interest, and I was glad that we were able to establish this.

            We somehow got on the topic of food, which we talked briefly about in our first meeting. This time we got more in depth, and he told me about Arabian restaurants in the area, as well as some new foods that he had tried. I was impressed at his attempts to reach out and try a lot of different foods, because I know that is something that I would be hesitant of if I was in his position.

            The most interesting takeaway from our conversation was a story he told me that occurred in Saudi Arabia. He left his car at home when he came to the US, and he said in the past week his friend wrecked his car into a bridge. His friend was hospitalized and the car was totaled. The picture of the car left me surprised as to how his friend even survived the accident. When I ask how the wreck occurred, Hussain said that his friend "couldn't remember." I wasn't sure how to interpret this. I thought maybe the wreck caused short term memory loss to Hussain's friend which left him unable to recall how the wreck occurred. When I voiced this to Hussain, he said he didn't know if that was the reason or not. This confused me, and made me wonder if language was preventing me from understanding his story, or preventing him from telling me the story correctly, or if Hussain's friend just really couldn't remember the events prior to the wreck. This would have been the first time that language barriers caused a misunderstanding between us.