My conversation partner is named Abdul-Aziz and he is from Saudi Arabia. He is 19 years old. I am 39 years old. Honestly, I was more concerned about the age difference than I was our cultural differences. We don't have much in common and so I imagined we would have difficulty finding mutually interesting topics to talk about. Of course, we had plenty to talk about and my worries were unfounded. Instead of doing the normal coffee or share a meal I would do with most of my friends, I decided to take Abdul to see a rap concert at a local venue. We got together prior to the concert and talked about numerous things. The most interesting conversations we had concerned families and the difference that exist between our two cultures. Abdul is the first person I have met who is from a family with one man married to multiple women. It is a big difference from how our culture handles marriage, and we talked about marriage in the US also.
I told Abdul that I'm a cook at a French restaurant and I noticed his interest in that. I am planning to take him to my work to eat a gourmet meal for our next outing.
I truly enjoyed Abdul-Aziz's company. He has a pretty good hold on speaking English but just needs to make a few corrections to really get it down. I tried to motivate him by giving him positive reinforcement when he stated complex ideas in a grammatically correct form.
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