Meeting Alya

“American coffee is too bland.” During my first meeting with Alya, my conversation partner, we met at the bookstore. I am a huge fan of coffee and thought that Alya would be too. Unfortunately, she has not grown to like American coffee since she has been here, and preferred to stick to tea. I found that she is from a small town in Saudi Arabia near Dhahran. I was excited to learn to learn that my conversation partner was from Saudi Arabia, since my parents currently live there and I have visited a few times over the past 3 years. It was nice to see that we already had a connection-a lots to talk about! We started with the basics of where she was from and she said that her town is where all of the dates come from in Saudi. If you have never been to Saudi you would not know how important dates are to Saudis, but take it from me they eat them with everything. They are kind of like mints in the sense that they eat dates as a cleanse of the pallet after a meal, but they also eat them as snacks and even deserts. Alya told me that the dates are what she misses most about Saudi, so she brought ten boxes with her to America!

Since I know a little about the women in the Saudi culture I was able to better understand her sentiments on a few topics-driving, education, and future work. I was interested to know if Alya drives since she is in American (since driving is illegal for women in Saudi Arabia). She laughed for a bit and said that one of the first things she did when she got to America was get a drivers license. I thought this was quite funny too. But she seemed less excited now than she was a year ago when she first learned to drive. She mostly lets her husband drive. I found this odd. I would have thought that after years of being forbidden to drive, she would drive everyday to makes up for he lack of driving experience. But her culture does not teach her to resent to rebel things, they are just the way they were meant to be. For generations and generations women have let the men do the driving, and she does not see a need for that too change. I have been to Saudi for three months at a time, and just during those months when it is illegal for me to drive I go stir crazy, so it is hard for me to image being okay with not driving. I liked that Alya was so open with me about her view of their culture and ours.

We also talked about what she was doing in America. It turns out that she and her husband both takes English classes her at TCU. She came to America to improve her English so she can take the GMAT and get accepted into a school to learn Information Systems and one day teach it to women in Saudi Arabia. I was really surprised to hear that she has such high dreams and aspirations, considering a lot of Saudi women grow up to get married and become wives and mothers. It is an honor in their culture to get married and have babies because large families are valued. It was wonderful to see her want to make a step toward furthering her education.

She was telling me a little bit about her English lessons here at TCU and told me that she is embarrassed about her speaking performance. Honestly I was shocked! Her English is amazing. Way better than my Arabic that’s for sure. She told me that she does not like going to restaurants and ordering food because she is afraid that people will not understand her and she will not be able to explain what she was saying. I tried to reassure her about her English abilities and let her know that she is wonderful! She may even be considered fluent. She did not stumble with any words during our conversation except she was not sure what a thermos was. Other than that is was perfect. While she was a little down on herself, it was nice to see her opening up to me and being honest about her feelings.

Along those same lines, Alya was telling me about her children’s experience with learning English. She has two children, a boy 5, and a girl 3. They are both in a daycare during the day and are learning English. She made a joke and said that their English was so much better than hers that maybe she should go to their daycare too to learn English. While she did have a sense that their adaptability to English was probably due to their age and not their teachers it was nice to hear her make a joke. I think it is true that when we are able to laugh at our perceived misfortunes we are content if life. For her, she is content with her English abilities because she is able to make jokes about it.

Overall, our meeting was very successful! I really enjoyed meeting Alya and think that all of our meeting will continue to be great. I am excited about them because I want to ask her questions about the Arab culture that I have not been able to ask other Saudi’s before. I hope that she will continue to feel comfortable with me.