It's okay Hanan, it still escapes a vast majority of Americans too.
Hanan asked me how my weekend was. I told her it was great and leaped into a description of my love for Hockey and the Dallas Stars. It's easy to say that hockey is not a common spectacle in Saudi Arabia because, well, it's a desert. It was especially foreign to a self proclaimed "beachy girl" like Hanan. We joked about an Arabian hockey team, even though I googled it, and it exists.
Hanan isn't a sports fans, so I figured I would stop gushing about my love of the strange ice sport.
It was about this time that her husband made a cameo. His name is Ryan, though he said his name is actually something else that I don't know how to spell or say. So, Ryan it is.
The dynamic was different with Ryan there, and I felt much more like an interviewer this time around. It was interesting to be around them together and hear them talk about their experiences. I've tried to explain it a couple times, but I guess I'll have to try again because they don't really seem to understand why I'm asking them questions about what they think is funny. This is probably in and of itself telling about their sense of humor. They are very rational, literal people.
Along those lines, they told me it's hard to draw a smile from people in Saudi Arabia because people are in general very serious. Humor is not common and joking depends on age, rank, and other rules of propriety. In general, its only appropriate to interject humor if you're around comfortable friends. This contrasts greatly with the way Americans communicate, where humor is usually welcome in most interactions.
I finished explaining why I was here to talk to them, and the best topic of discussion I could think of was food. I personally love food, and luckily so do most humans. So, we talked about BBQ because both Texans and Saudis enjoy a good smoked meat. They love the food here and were amazed at the amount of cheese that Americans eat. They said that Americans use cheese like Saudis use spices, which I guess I understand because cheese is my spice of choice.
From what I can tell, they really enjoy Texas. I asked them how they felt about Dallas and they said they were glad they lived in Fort Worth because Dallas was "crazy" and had "roads and bridges like spaghetti." I laughed at this because it was truly accurate-- Dallas: the land of dangerous, asphalt spaghetti.
We had a good talk, and it was interesting to see the two interact. I'm not sure if Ryan will be around in the future, but it definitely added another layer to the conversation. As a parting note, a funny thing that Hanan and Ryan revealed to me about Saudi Arabians is that apparently they all wake up at noon and go to bed at 4 am, which is eerily similar to the preferred sleep schedule of a college student.
