Meeting with Khalifa #3

Today, I met with Khalifa for the third time. Since he enjoyed the meal so much last time, we decided to meet at McAlister’s again. Once we found a seat (it was packed like always) and got settled down, we started discussing how everything was going since we last met. He is still planning on moving to California after the semester but is having trouble getting permission from the school that he wants to attend there (Riverside). His sister and cousin are having the same problem.

He is still extremely concerned with his speaking and gets frustrated when he makes mistakes or can’t figure out how to put a thought into words. I assured him that his speaking has gotten even better (which it really has) since the last time we met, which he was happy to hear. It really is crazy seeing the progress that he has made between our meetings. However, even though speaking is going well, he is still quite frustrated with writing.

After some casual conversation about how our lives have been going, we stumbled upon what I found to be the most interesting part of our conversation. He mentioned that he had recently read that TCU was only 20% international students and asked me if the percentage was really that low. Honestly, I felt that 20% was higher than the actual percentage. He mentioned that at other schools such as UTA there is a much greater population of international students. He asked why TCU’s percentage is so low and honestly I didn’t have an answer. I really had never even given the topic much of a thought and felt rather naive for not doing so.

From there, the conversation got even more interesting. Khalifa began telling me all of the things he loved about Texas. He told a story about how when he first got here and could speak virtually no English, he went to the grocery store. Even though one of the employees couldn’t understand anything he was saying, they used body language and hand signals and eventually, the employee helped Khalifa find exactly what he needed. It was this kind of attention, which I assured him, was good old “southern hospitality” that really left a lasting impression on Khalifa. In the weeks leading up to Khalifa leaving for Texas, all anyone would say to him was “why Texas?!” everyone is racist and mean and they hate us. His cousin added to these fears by filling him in on how poorly he was treated while studying in Europe. He told Khalifa, “if Europe was that bad, imagine how bad Texas is going to be.” Needless to say, Khalifa was nervous when he arrived in Texas. He was bracing himself for the treatment that all of his friends from Saudi Arabia made sound imminent. Luckily, that treatment never came. From his first true encounter with Americans at the grocery store until now, Khalifa has been extremely impressed by how kind and understanding people have been here. He has hardly heard anything racist while he has been here. He assured me that when he gets back to Saudi Arabia, he will be sure to let everyone know how wrong they are about Texas and recommend it to anyone wanting to visit America. This part of our conversation touched me more than anything that we have talked about so far. Living in Texas for 18 years of my life, I couldn’t help but feel an enormous sense of pride. It was such a good feeling hearing about the hospitality that the south is known for in action.

There is one question that I’ve been pondering as a result of this conversation and I wanted to pose it to anyone who might have an opinion; is the language barrier purely based upon a person’s inability to speak the same language as those around him? Is it really as big of a deal as we make it out to be? Or with all of the nonverbal communication that humans use on a regular basis, as long as we are willing to put in effort, is the language barrier as small as we are willing to make it?