Catalina - CP #6

Finally Rached and I met again! Twice in two months is not bad, I’d say. It was lunch time at CIES and we headed towards the lounge area. We started out talking about general stuff (what he was going to do in the holidays, things that he can do in Tallahassee and FSU since he’s going to be in CIES for a year, etc). Last time I’d seen him he was leaving Snookers, and he told me how he loves pool… He told me he was thinking of not doing much during the holidays since he has a lot to do in Tallahassee. And what that a lot is all about is the fact that he doesn’t have any teeth at all! He’s just getting them implanted here and he told me what it was like growing up like that, and how he feels like his friends and other students make fun of him and he really thinks his life will change once he gets all his teeth in. He also is planning on getting his glasses taken off by a sight operation. You know, I really though this is what happened to girls, how they always want to become the swan that develops from that ugly duckling, and it was so interesting to see how it’s something universal to want to become more attractive. I didn’t even notice he was missing his teeth until he showed me! Rached is actually a slow speaker buy he organizes his thoughts very well and produces good grammatical structures, unlike a lot of other students that are good at getting their message across faster but lack the grammatical accuracy. What I am not sure of is his comprehension; I think he doesn’t really understand half of what I say! A friend of his joined the conversation towards the end of the hour, and our talking shifted towards fishing for a while, until three more Arab male students walked in and somehow we started speaking about women working or not. I tried my best to be very reasonable and non-confrontational and think I did pretty well in communication without judging, but one of the students really wanted to make an issue out of it! There was only ten minutes left of their lunch time, though, so it all ended in peace. Ufff… that was a close call!