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.