Carolina CP2

I met with Najwa again on Friday. I picked her up after class and went to Blackdog Cafe near Lake Ella. When setting up this meeting I asked if she liked coffee or tea and she looked at me as if I had asked her if she liked to breathe. "Of course I do!! What do you think I am??" So off we went to Blackdog to get a teapot of green tea and play Scrabble. Upon arriving I ran into an old friend from high school and was trying not to over stimulate Najwa in conversation. But she kept up completely! She understood everything we said and understood the nuances in the conversation--that I was trying to end it quickly to get back to our game of Scrabble. Najwa just laughed and said she had friends like that too, that you couldn't get to stop talking. At this point in my relationship with Najwa I literally feel like I'm just hanging out with a good friend. Her English is so amazing. I can tell at the beginning of conversations she gets shy and doesn't really want to talk, but by the end of the two hours of us playing Scrabble she was a chatterbox that wasn't holding back, not to mention hardly making any grammatical mistakes at all. When Najwa starts to say a word that is incorrect, she catches herself and then changes it. I can't believe her, this is so advanced most English speakers just go along with the mistake! For example, she was discussing her prayer again and was saying "I having--I have to pray again at 1:30pm today." I feel like Najwa is teaching me more about Libyan culture and just life in general than I am about English. She knows so much about the culture here and is so advanced. I started explaining to her idioms in the English language. She kept up perfectly and told me about idioms in Arabic! I was confused as how to even explain what and idiom was and she was following me the whole way. She understood "The straw that broke the camel's back" and "Take the cake" and started giving me the arabic equivalents that roughly translates to, "You eat the atmosphere." She showed me pictures of her older brother's wedding and his wife--whose hair I got to see in the picture! I felt so honored. Najwa is truly awesome and I can't wait to see her again. We're really becoming friends and she's not too shy to hug me now!