5th Meeting with Khalifa

Yesterday, I met with Khalifa for the fifth time. We again met for dinner. Our conversation started out very casual as usual. We talked about our weeks and he was amazed by the amount of tests and papers that I have due next week. He’s still working on getting his move to California approved and is getting more excited by the day. His cousin went to school in California and has told him amazing things. However, he’s also feeling a lot of pressure from his family to finish school and get back to Saudi Arabia because they need his help. His education is taking a lot longer than it took his brother so some of the family is getting rather impatient. From what I could tell, it seemed as though family pressure in Saudi Arabia is even more prevalent than in the US.

Next, the election came up and I’m sure he could immediately tell that it was something that I didn’t want to talk about. However, we did have a brief discussion about a few of his observations. He had seen that heat map and was amazed that a large portion of the map was red with the occasional blue pocket yet Obama had 51% of the vote. I know the middle of the US is spread out a lot more than the east and west coasts but it still amazes me how the small amount of blue on that map makes up over half of the American population. I really had no explanation or way to explain it but told him that he will experience first-hand the mass population of certain areas of the US when he moves to California.

Once our conversation began winding down, he shocked me and once again started to open up about his life back home. It started when he offered me a cigarette and I politely declined. This apparently reminded him of a time when his brother caught him smoking and trashed the rest of the pack. Having done this numerous times to my younger brother, I was very familiar with the situation. He said that since his brother is 14 years older than him, his brother has pretty much been a father figure to him throughout his life. His brother is one the main people pressuring Khalifa to get his education and get good grades in America as quickly as possible so that he can get back to Saudi Arabia. Apparently, Khalifa was admittedly quite the trouble maker in his grade school days back in Saudi Arabia. He started skipping class in third grade, hated school, did very minimal homework, and really had no interest in learning. However, with lots of encouragement from his family, he has really started to turn his education around. He’s making huge progress in the IEP program and is actually looking forward to his next educational adventure. He also revealed that his brother went to school in California and said amazing things about it which is one of the reasons that he is so excited to move there. He wants to follow in his brothers footsteps by moving to California and getting good grades and really impressing his family. I have to say, his dedication to his family was pretty impressive. You could tell, that his family is very close knit and that they always look out for each other. In the me first society we live in today, I feel like America is slowly losing the close knit family environment and it was refreshing to hear that this isn’t the case across the world (even though oftentimes we think that only thing that effect America matter). I’m excited to meet with Khalifa again and to hopefully learn more about his family where he came from. After 5 meetings, he’s really opened up and our meetings continue to get increasingly personal and interesting.