Conversation 4

I saw Bayan again today (Friday). I picked her up from the BLUU and we headed straight to Sweet Sammies. We chatted in the car about what we’d both been up to, because we hadn’t met for a couple of weeks. She told me she hasn’t been doing much of anything. She had hoped to travel over spring break but doesn’t exactly have the option to do so. I asked her how her application process to TCU was going, and she told me about a classmate who is also applying to TCU. The girl told Bayan that attending TCU is really difficult because you have to be incredibly strong in English, and Bayan doesn’t believe she is good enough. I keep trying to tell her that her English is really excellent and she has learned it amazingly fast, but she is still lacking confidence. However, I can see that she is letting the fear of rejection prevent her entirely from even taking the steps toward applying. I hope she will be able to move past that fear and attend TCU for her master’s degree.

Sweet Sammies was delicious (did I really even need to add that? I mean duh, am I right?). Bayan said she really enjoyed it and was sweet enough to pay for me because I drove her there and introduced it to her. She is so thoughtful. Along with our discussion of her applying to graduate school, she was saying how it’s amazing that so many cities here have multiple universities. This is not the case in Saudi Arabia. The nearest university to where she lives is 45 minutes away, and there are really only two in her region. The closest university to my house in Oklahoma City is about seven minutes away, and there are at least five others within a 30-minute range. She told me there are not enough colleges there for all of the students, but the country greatly encourages education. She said that the country offers people money to come to school in the United States. These are not just scholarships, but money to live on as well, even if someone brings their whole family with them. If the person going to school has kids, Saudi Arabia pays for their kids to attend school. The money ends once the person graduates, and at that point the majority of people will return to Saudi Arabia. I find this really fascinating, because we tend to take college so for granted I think. It’s so readily available if we have the means to go, but in many other countries, people have to leave absolutely everything they know in order to continue their education. I feel like I learn some new information and appreciation every time I am with Bayan, so I am finding this experience just as valuable as she is.

Conversation 3…and a Visitor!

My third conversation with Bayan went nicely! We met in the BLUU just before spring break and discussed how our weeks had gone. She was sweet enough to ask how my mom’s visit had gone. It was so nice of her to remember that my mom had come to visit. After we had been talking for several minutes, another IEP student came up and joined us. Her name is Lilly. She has a conversation partner too, but I don’t think it’s anyone in my class. She told me it’s a boy, and she prefers talking with girls, which Bayan agreed with. She and Bayan are friends so she stayed with us to talk. She is from Vietnam and incredibly sweet. She hasn’t been here for as long as Bayan, but her English is still extremely good! I know I’ve said it before, but these people who have left their homes and everything they know to come here and learn a completely new language is just incredible to me. I find it really inspiring, and more and more I’m seeing that it’s something I’d love to do one day, maybe right after college. But that’s for another day.

On this day, we talked about a variety of things. One thing we touched on was dieting. Lilly began telling me that some of her friends are trying to diet, and she asked me my opinion on it, and if I knew any good diets. I explained that I don’t really like the whole ‘diet’ concept, but rather a regimen of healthy eating and exercising. Bayan said that she agrees with me, although she doesn’t get a chance to work out much. Because Bayan and I have talked before about our mutual large sweet tooth, she was surprised to find out about my personal rule of not eating sweets on weekdays. Somehow this discussion of dieting and exercise spun into a whole discussion about milk. Lilly asked if I knew the best kind of milk to drink. I really didn’t have an answer to this. I told her I don’t really know the difference between the different kinds of milk, just that whole milk contains the most fat, while skim contains the least.

The discussion of body image led into the topic of different perceptions of beauty. They both told me how in their respective countries, it is quite different. They said that paler skin is considered more beautiful, which is quite the opposite of the United States. It’s funny, because both of these women have fairly tan skin, especially Bayan, which is not the ‘thing’ to have in Saudi Arabia and Vietnam. It’s so interesting how the opinions in various countries are so different.

After this topic, we found our way over to pets and animals. Bayan expressed her fear of all kinds of dogs. She explained she is not a big animal person in general, but for some reason she is the most afraid of dogs, big and small. We talked for a while about the high intelligence of higher primates, like apes, and how fascinating they are. Lilly told me about an article they had read in one of their IEP classes about chimpanzees. I told them about how I learned that there are gorillas who have been able to learn American Sign Language. This made me think about the importance of languages, that it is able to connect me to these two women from other cultures, and language can even connect humans to animals.

After a while, Bayan said she needed to go because she and her husband were going to see a movie. Before we all parted ways, she mentioned that it was almost her one-year anniversary of being in the US! I promised that after spring break I would take her to Sweet Sammies to celebrate her being here for a year! It was a nice conversation and I enjoyed Lilly joining us as well.

Second Conversation

(Disclaimer..this conversation actually happened one week ago, but I forgot to post it! Oops!)

I met with Bayan again today. I was running a little bit late but as always she was so polite about it and apologized in case she had made me rush! When she makes comments like this it reminds me what a valuable experience this is to her, and it makes me appreciate it even more. She wants so badly to be strong in her English and talks a lot about not having good pronunciation or grammar or vocabulary, but honestly I believe the only thing she truly lacks is confidence! I am truly hoping that through this experience, I will be able to give her some. The conversation moved a little more slowly today, mainly because I think we just covered SO MUCH in our first conversation that we weren’t really sure where to go from there! However, a subject that doesn’t seem to fail with us is food, because we both enjoy it so much. We discussed more in depth about our favorite types of food, and recommended some local restaurants to each other. She loves all kinds of foods, as do I. We also share a huge bond over desserts, and I promised to take her to Sweet Sammies during one of our conversations, because she has never been!

Unfortunately, some of my restaurant suggestions may not be able to come to fruition for her. It is difficult for Bayan to try new places or get around Fort Worth because she doesn’t drive and relies on her husband to get her around. As a married woman who lives about 15 minutes away from campus, I can only imagine how hard that would be. I asked her if she had any plans for the weekend, but she said no, because her husband had plans with some of his friends. I found this kind of sad that she can sort of only live around his plans, and she doesn’t get opportunity outside of class to spend time with her acquaintances. This does not seem to bother her too much, though, because it gives her plenty of time to relax and focus on her studies.

Another thing that she enjoys doing is going to movies. We talked for a while about the movie Frozen, and how we both really liked how the movie is centered on sisterly love rather than romantic love. This led us into a discussion about her family. She has so many siblings; I wanted to learn more about them! It turns out that Bayan is the second youngest, and the majority of her older brothers and sisters have children. The oldest and youngest are extremely far apart. Her oldest siblings have children that are nearly her age! I asked if she gets to speak with her parents often. She does get to talk to her dad, but her mom was on some medication for a mental issue and it took away her ability to talk. It sounds like her mother has some health problems that we didn’t really go in depth on. The inability to talk makes it entirely impossible to speak with her mom, because her parents are not educated, so they cannot read. This means she can’t write or email them. I am sure this is difficult for her. I don’t know what I would do if I could no longer speak to my mom. In my eyes this makes Bayan even more courageous for coming to America to learn English. I admire her a lot, and hopefully by the time these conversations are over, she will realize that and learn to admire herself too!