Conversation Partner: Meeting #1

On February 19th I met with my conversation partner by Union Grounds in the BLUU. Actually, I met with two conversation partners. Their names were Mohanad and Abdul, and they are two TCU students from Saudi Arabia who speak English as their second language. Mohanad and Abdul are twins. Just to give you some vague idea of what they look like, they both resemble that guy from Inception that you kinda sorta remember.

Yusuf from Inception

Okay. Onto the conversation. What did we converse about? Good question, Dear Reader. I shall proceed to inform you.

At first we talked about our home lives. Mohanad and Abdul are from Saudi Arabia. Their family is comprised of themselves, their parents, and their younger sisters. When I asked them if their sisters were planning on attending TCU at some point, they replied quite bluntly and hilariously that their sisters aren't as smart or good at school as they are - so probably not. I asked them if they had any pets back home. They said that they've had both dogs and cats in the past. They didn't seem to mind their dog, but objected to their cats because they always smelled awful.

I wondered where in Saudi Arabia I should go if I ever wanted to visit, and they listed the names of some marketplaces, famous streets, and impressive buildings (all in Arabic) that I can neither remember nor pronounce. I asked them about the Burj Khalifa and if they had seen it in Mission Impossible 4. They had not, but they did mention that they enjoyed Tom Cruise movies and continued to talk about Dubai for a little bit.

TFM

Then our conversation transitioned more towards America. I asked them what they thought of TCU and America in general. So far they give rave reviews. They both live in Samuelson, so they're not exactly slumming it as far as dorms go. Because it's their first semester at TCU they're rooming together, but after next semester they're both going to branch out and find American roommates so that they can improve their English.

We all agreed that TCU had tons of extremely cute girls. I found the contrast between their experiences here in America and back home in Saudi Arabia to be quite hilarious. They said it was shocking to them to see guys just walk up to a girl and tell her that she was beautiful. The audacity of these gentlemen was surprising, but even more so was the fact that the girls didn't seem to mind. They said that back home, such interaction would have been offensive and would have provoked a slap to the face.

While on the topic of women, both Mohanad and Abdul seemed to be unable to think of a particular word to describe their experience with girls at TCU. For about 5 minutes we played the most fun game of charades ever. They repeatedly alternated between making a lifting motion with both of their hands and sticking both hands out and shaking them in a dismissive manner. In order to assist me, Mohanad pulled out his BlackBerry which had a translator app on it. He typed away for a bit then showed me his phone. It said "ego". I LOL'd -- the word they were looking for was "snobby". I explained what snobby meant to me and how to use it in a sentence. After that we all had a good laugh.

Derp

Then I asked Mohanad and Abdul what the most difficult part of learning English was. I think they both agreed that it was the nonsensical nature of differences in spelling and pronunciation. They were frustrated with letter combinations like ph which produced an "f" sound, ti which produces a "sh" sound in -tion words, and th which makes a sound unlike "t" or "h" separately. Additionally, they were dumbfounded by the fact that the word "water" -- spelled with a t, mind you -- is pronounced "wah-dur". When they asked me why the letter t made a "d" sound, I had no response. Now I was dumbfounded as well. Their responses really made me take a step back and consider how stupid the English language is as well as how much I take my conversation skill for granted.

At this point we had been talking for about an hour, so we decided to pack things up. I noticed Mohanad had some Beats headphones. I asked him what type of music he listened to. He said he mostly listened to Saudi Arabian music because American music was generally too fast-paced for him. At first I thought he meant American music was too uptempo, but obviously he meant that he couldn't understand all the lyrics at once. However, he didn't completely ignore American music. Mohanad has a very eclectic music taste. He listens to Justin Bieber, Bob Marley, and Akon (which he initially pronounced "econ").

Alright. That's pretty much it for our first meeting. I hope there were enough movie references and pictures to keep you interested the whole way through.

EMERGENCY CUTENESS BELOW