I met up with Mohammed before class on Thursday. He had emailed me about a speaking presentation that he has due near the end of the summer term. He is to speak in front of a class for ten minutes. He was quite nervous about this because he says he has a hard time speaking in front of a class for ten minutes in Arabic. When he told me what his topic was, I was quite confused. He was assigned the topic of "American Fortune Telling". It is to my understanding that there is not distinct American style of fortune telling, and that this practice is rooted from European gypsies of old. I brought my laptop and we decided to look into this together. We failed to find any distinct American style of fortune telling but I suggested some options for him. I told him he could focus on the business aspect of fortune telling, knowing that many areas have fortune telling shops set up in the states. I also suggested just breaking down fortune telling in general and talking about the history and different ways to tell fortunes. After all of this I apologized and told him to ask his teacher what would be the best way to approach this subject. We moved on and went on youtube to look for videos that he could use for the presentation. He was more comfortable now that we had his presentation a little more structured. I emailed him various links that we found so that he can work on his presentation at home.
After all this school talk, I still had 20 minutes to kill before class. We started talking sports and quickly began looking at youtube videos of our favorite athletes. Mohammed is a soccer fan and actually is recovering from a foot injury he suffered less than a year ago. I am a basketball fan and I shared with him my opinions. We are both avid sports fans and both have a level of respect for each of our preferred games. Talking sports with Mohammed was probably one of the most fun moments I've shared with him.
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