Hayley CP #6

Talal

I met with Talal in the CIES student lounge and about half of our TEFL class was there so that was kind of funny. I think that overall this meeting was the best so far. I feel like we are both pretty comfortable by now so it makes communication issues a lot easier. For example, he said that his sister has blue eyes like mine but she doesn’t have blue hair like me. So I asked “Blue hair?” and he was like “Yeah your blue hair…” I pointed to my blue backpack like “Blue?” And we both just started laughing at how funny that is rather than feeling awkward at pointing out a mistake or him being embarrassed over messing up something simple.

We also talked a lot about religion. Mainly comparing the Christianity I grew up with Islam. I asked him about he felt about confessions. I know confessions are important particularly in Catholicism but I know at my church we used to have accountability partners. The idea was basically someone who would hold you accountable for you sins, keeping up with your bible studies, and other things that you should be doing. He said in Islam this really isn’t the way it goes. He said that is considered business between you and God only. I really liked that because even though most people mean well I cannot honestly say that there were not people who took advantage of accountability to be nosey and judgmental.

He also told me about how Arabic coffee was different from American coffee and how coffee is such an important part of the culture there. He said that if someone is in your home you have to serve them coffee and if they do not accept it, that is shame. So shameful in fact, that people will use this to almost bribe people to do what that want. His example was that if a man proposed to a woman and her father said no, the man’s father would go for coffee at the woman’s home and refuse her father’s coffee until he allowed them to marry. Wow, that is a serious coffee break.