Meeting with Nasser #7

             I am beginning to understand how time means different things to different cultures. We learned in speech that America is a monochromic culture where time is viewed as a scarce resource which must be rationed and controlled by schedules and appointments, whereas polychromic cultures view good relationships as the important thing so the use of time needs to be flexible in order to please everybody; the west is traditionally monochromic and the east is polychromic. In my meetings with Nasser, I can definitely see this difference between our cultures’ view of time. Nevertheless, we managed to meet for about 20 minutes today.

            Nasser went and saw the play put on by TCU three times this weekend. He originally thought he was going to see a person play piano, but it turned out to be the play. After watching it, he loved it so much that he bought tickets to see it two more times. I’m not positive this is what he was saying, but he said that even after seeing it once and then twice, he was not sure if there was going to be a second half; I would assume the play is performed the same way every time, so maybe Nasser is just not used to American plays?

            We talked a little bit about the weather and Thanksgiving. I asked if he has finals and if he takes different classes or if his English intensive program is one class. He is in four different classes (I think these were all the classes he told me): reading, writing, speaking, and listening; he has a final in each one. But after finals, he is going home to Saudi Arabia for a month! He hasn’t been home in over a year, so he is really excited to be home, but not at all excited for the journey home. He said it takes 20-24 hours to get back, and this time he has a five hour layover in London. Then I shared my awful travel experience of when I went to Moscow for a gymnastics competition.

            At that, we set up out next meeting for tomorrow. I had told him that not only do I have a really important and crazy hard organic chemistry test tomorrow, but I also have a Spanish quiz and a Spanish group presentation. When he heard that, he wanted me to go study; he felt guilty for being late for a third time and didn’t want to take anymore of my time from my homework. That was very sweet of him. When we meet tomorrow, the o-chem test will be behind me!