Last Meeting with Noor (For Now)

My last meeting with Noor was a bittersweet one.  Sweet because it is the end of the semester, she successfully completed her English courses last week, and I am only a few days away from completing my classes as well.  Bitter, though, because I am not sure how much more I will see of her.  She will still be here for a while, but she is not completely sure where life is going to take her for the next couple of years and she will possibly be moving to another school before long for her Master’s degree.

        The friendship I have had the chance to create with Noor is one which I will never forget, because it is one completely different than any other friendship I have in college.  There are people I speak to every single day that have not taught me the same things I have learned through just six short meetings with Noor.  Noor has made me realize that people really are so much more similar than what we think.  It is easy to classify people into different groups, whether that be ethnicity, race, religion, or even completely irrational groupings in college such as “Greek vs. non-Greek” and sub classifications based on major.  However, I’ve realized that once you sit down with someone one on one and truly make an effort to get to know them, it does not take much time at all for those barriers to come down. 

As I’ve said before, I was terrified to meet Noor, but mainly because I am terrified to meet anyone.  That’s just a part of who I am.  So being forced to partner up with someone was one of the most terrifying experiences that became one of the most rewarding.  Requirements like this should be what getting an education is really all about. Through Noor and many other people, I have learned more through my relationships with people while in college than I can ever learn in a cold lecture hall.  I am incredibly thankful that I chose to take this class and had the chance to complete assignments that were out of the ordinary rather than memorizing facts I can regurgitate on an exam.

        I hugged Noor goodbye without even thinking about the fact that I won’t be able to meet with her next week and catch up on how everything is going, but I do hope that I am able to keep in touch and remain close friends at least as long as she is here at TCU.  Even as we do move to different places in life, it is a connection that I am thankful to have made and I look forward to celebrating her successes with her in the future.

Meeting with Noor

     Today I had the chance to grab lunch with Noor again, and this time she brought along one of her friends in the IEP program and another friend who works in a campus ministry at TCU.  It was really a lot of fun today, especially since there was someone else there who is from this area.  Our conversation was all over the board, but a few things were really interesting.  Noor and her Saudi Arabian friend asked us a million questions about Christmas, half of which I didn’t even have the answer to (like why the traditional colors are green and red).  It was a lot of fun to tell stories about Santa visiting and to share some of my favorite traditions.  We laughed about how strange it is that we lie to our kids for years about a man coming down a chimney in the middle of the night, but finally decided that it was just too much fun to not keep doing it.

      Of course Christmas is not a well-known holiday in Saudi Arabia, Noor actually said the only reason she knew anything about it was because of all the movies she watches.  She did say that there are two main holidays practiced and that one allows for a month long break.  She went on to explain that for one of the holidays in Saudi Arabia it is tradition for the adults in the family to give money to the children.  She said when she was younger it would not be abnormal to receive $1,000 for this one holiday.  When asked how she spent this money, she explained that much of it was spent on fun gifts for themselves, but that they were also taught at a young age to share with others in need by buying them gifts with their money and delivering it to them.  She said her family has the rule that you can still be considered a child for this holiday as long as you are not married, so she really plays that card even though 25 years old and living on the other side of the world is probably not technically a child anymore.

     While on the topic of Saudi Arabia, another interesting point came up that was something we had mentioned before but had not discussed in detail, and that is women driving.  She said she is just learning to drive while in the US because women are not allowed to drive where she is from.  In fact, each family hires a driver for the women and he lives in a small house connected to the family’s house.  She also said that she went to a university about an hour and a half away from her home and she and nine other girls rode a bus there every morning.  She said the windows were tinted and they would put up a barrier between them and the driver and would bring coffee and snacks and all circle up and chat on the way to school.  Although I’d still rather have the right of driving, she did make it sound like a lot of fun and a huge convenience.  I suppose since it benefits the women in the sense that they can eat, sleep, and work on the way to their destination, none of them take note of the fact that it is unequal treatment.  It is just interesting to me because there is such uproar of equality and women’s rights in the United States while other countries have few rights at all for women and they do not seem to think anything of it.

     Another interesting thing we discussed was the English language itself.  Why are there silent letters?  Why would a p and an h make the f sound?  Why is grammar so complicated?  Questions like this are only a few of the many questions I had never even thought about before.  I have been taught since the first grade that silent letters exist, and I never really thought to question why.  I wasn’t much help to answer her questions, but it was fun to be able to laugh about how silly it seemed.

     This was another great meeting with Noor and I am looking forward to meeting with her one more time before the semester ends.  I am really hoping that she will choose to stay at TCU for her master’s program so that I can still keep in touch next year, but that decision is still up in the air.  I am incredibly thankful for what Noor has taught me and I am looking forward to one last meeting for the semester.

Learning Experience

It’s funny that I am struggling to come up with a “learning experience” to write about as I think back about the last couple of months.  There are so many, and yet so few that seem important.  What I’ve figured out over the last year and a half is that tests, grades, and shoving facts down throats somehow have become more important than actually giving students the experience of learning.  This is the exact reason that I am thankful for my non-science classes (although they are becoming fewer and fewer as I finish my core classes).  Don’t get me wrong; biology is awesome.  I’d even argue that it’s the most important thing to know about.  It’s just that when classes become more painful than rewarding, it’s hard to actually enjoy any type of learning experience.

Having that said, one class in particular has opened my mind more to other ways of thinking about life.  Literature and Civilizations, as horribly boring as it sounded when I signed up for it, has turned out to be rewarding in the sense that I do not have to categorize everything as black or white, fact or fiction, nucleophile or base.  Instead I’m encouraged to just think.  And believe it or not, it’s perfectly okay if what I think is not the same thing as what the person next to me thinks.  There is no right or wrong, but instead we discuss relevant issues that make a difference in the world.

Specifically, I want to write about a recent learning experience in that class that concerns Henry David Thoreau.  First I learned the irritating fact that his name was originally David Henry and I was ready to throw in the towel just because of that.  Reading parts (and thankfully not all) of Walden was an interesting experience because it made me think about the world from a different point of view, even if it was only for a few minutes at a time as I read it or as we discussed it.  Thoreau talked about living a simple, thoughtful, and “deliberate” life free of distractions.  He encouraged people to be themselves, and not simply conform to society without questioning why you are who you are or why you are doing what you are doing.  Although I can’t say that everything he suggested we do is something I agree with, he did have thought-provoking points, which really was the reason he wrote anything in the first place.  For example, he makes a point that he cannot stay where he is any longer because he has many more lives to live.  Everywhere else I’ve heard you only have one life, you only live once (YOLO), and you better live it up, but Thoreau throws out the idea of living many lives in a lifetime by continuing to change and not getting stuck in a rut.  Not a life changing thought for me at this point in my life, but still an interesting thought to ponder. Reading parts of Walden was eye opening and thought provoking, and even though it did not change the way I view life it is still an important learning experience.

Learning experiences such as this are not typical as a Biology major, so I think that it is important to have these types of classes that teach people how to think about everyday life and remember that the world isn’t always black and white. 

Meeting with Noor

I had the opportunity to meet with my conversation partner, Noor, last week.  We had planned on meeting for lunch as we have for the previous meetings, but this time when she showed up she brought two friends with her.  I won’t lie; I was a little intimidated.  Three people who are in the process of learning English and then there’s me.  What am I supposed to talk about?  Should I assume they understand everything I’m saying, or should I talk slowly at the risk of rudely over exaggerating?  I had already made my way past these fears the first time meeting with Noor, but with new people I had no idea what to do.  It was quite obvious that I was the odd one out.

As we began to eat and talk, however, everything went really well.  One of the girls was more talkative than anyone I know, and her English was fantastic.  She wanted to talk about movies and TV shows (all of which were American and popular movies) which made it easy to carry on a conversation.  It was a lot of fun to see that it really wasn’t difficult to interact with them at all; in fact, it would probably be a lot of fun to hang out with them just as a typical group of friends. 

A couple interesting things were said that I thought were worth making note of.  After receiving our food one girl looked worried and asked the waiter to come back over and verify that there was no bacon (or any form of pork for that matter) on her baked potato.  This is one thing I had not thought about that would be difficult about living in another country.  We are insensitive to other people’s religious customs and it is not even on our radar when choosing restaurants or suggesting what they should get to eat.  It turned out perfectly fine and pork free, but it did make me more aware of what to watch out for and how to be more sensitive to other cultures.

Another funny comment was one that Noor made about the Halloween party she had a few weeks ago.  I simply asked if she did anything fun to celebrate, as it was something we discussed in a previous meeting, and she said “Oh yes we had a party!” I replied happily with a simple “oh that’s great!” or something of that nature, then she quickly said “Oh! Only with girls!”  I just found this interesting that she was quick to make that statement as if it was something important that I know.  It would not cross my mind that it would matter to have both men and women at a party; in fact, I would think it would be expected.   This is just another cultural difference that I would have been completely insensitive to if it had of been by own Halloween party.

Aside from these comments the meeting was fairly uninteresting but it was nice to get to know a few more people and learn a little bit more about where they are coming from and why they are here.  The girl who was bubbly and talkative said she is here for engineering of some sort, which apparently has great opportunities back in Saudi Arabia.  Again this is a somewhat interesting contrast to America where most (but not all of course) engineers tend to be males.

 Even when the conversations are not particularly meaningful or thought provoking it is still a great learning experience.   Overall it was another great meeting and I look forward to meeting with her again as the semester is coming to an end.

River Reflection 2

            When I take time to stop and really think about water, it never fails that I am perplexed by what makes it so attractive.  Maybe it’s the roaring sounds of a waterfall that seem to drown out the rest of the world, or maybe it’s the stillness of a pool in a secluded place.   Something about water is just fascinating to us as human beings.  I love watching small ripples caused by a fish or a duck swimming, and seeing the way even the slightest breeze can completely change the way the water looks.      I love the way light reflects off of water and makes it sparkle.  Most of all, I just love the water itself.

            There is a reason we are inherently attracted to water.  After all, you are composed of mostly water and would not even survive a week without it.  If for some reason humans were naturally repulsed by water, then the human population would cease to exist.  People over the centuries have moved hundreds of miles to be closer to water, have determined their entire lives around the presence of water, and even make their living based on the amount of water available.  Not enjoying the sights, sounds, and smells of water would make this world an awfully unpleasant place to live. 

            It completely makes sense evolutionarily that we would grow to love everything about water and want to be as close to it as possible, but few people realize this power that water has in our lives.  People get thirsty and pour a glass of water, or get dirty and take a shower, but rarely does anyone stop and think “Hmm I wonder why this is so refreshing and relaxing.”  Our body knows how much we truly need water; so every one of our senses is designed to love everything about it.   We love the sight moving water, the sound of majestic waterfalls, the smell of the ocean, the cool, crisp touch of water on a hot summer day, and the refreshing taste after a long run.  If all of your senses are telling you something is great, it is impossible to not love being around it.  To put it simply, we innately love water because we cannot survive without it.

            I think it is incredibly interesting to think about these kinds of things, especially as I sit next to the river and wind down for the day.  It’s refreshing, it’s comforting, and it actually gives me a different perspective on what’s going on in my life.  People don’t use this wonderful resource we have often enough.  Everyone is driving by after a long day of work, headed home to sit on the couch and watch TV for a couple hours before they go to bed and call it a day, and yet just stopping by for 20 minutes to go on a walk and let your thoughts wander could change your outlook on the entire week.

A “river reflection” assignment has by far been the best assignment I have had for this semester, because without an assignment such as this there is no way I would venture out and spend time just sitting by a river.  If I’m not being productive and actually accomplishing an assignment of some sort I get stressed and can’t enjoy whatever it is I’m trying do.  This has given me a chance to get out of my little bubble at TCU and spend some time in nature to think about things that are more important than an assignment for class or an exam two weeks from now.  Spending time outside is therapeutic for me, and that is extremely helpful in the midst of a stressful semester.