My New Friend Zooz

I met with Abdulaziz for the first time today! Meeting with a conversation partner was something I was incredibly nervous about. I don’t think I’m great at keeping up a conversation with someone I’ve never met, plus I’m awful at trying to understand accents. I was so afraid that I would spend much of the conversation smiling and nodding. Thankfully, Zooz (Abdulaziz’s favorite nickname) has been here a bit more than a year and speaks quite clearly. He said when he arrived, he didn’t even know what “yes” and “no” are; it’s amazing how quickly he has picked up the language!

Our conversation mostly focused on Abdulaziz’s background, and I learned a lot. Apparently camels are extremely valuable in Saudi Arabia, where he is from. The jaw-dropping example he used was that camels can be more expensive than a Lamborghini! That whole concept blew my mind. They even have camel beauty contests, and owning a winning camel is exceptionally prestigious. Then he showed me a video of his family’s camels walking through the desert in a line, and told me his father gave him a camel and that camel had a baby.

Abdulaziz has a tremendously large family, partially because Saudi Arabia has different marriage rules than the United States. Men can have a maximum of four wives, which his father does. His mother is the first wife, and he is the youngest of her children. Between all the wives, there are twenty-four kids: fourteen girls and ten boys. Not all thirty of his family members live in the same house together, many are married and live on their own now. This is a fairly typical situation. I asked if he ever has family reunions where everyone in his extended family gets together as well, and he chuckled and said no. 

Those were our main topics of conversation, and we discussed a few other items briefly. Of course, theres always the soccer/futbal/football discussion to have with anyone who isn’t American, and we talked a little about how Texas is different from where we’re from (hotter for me, cooler for him). I found out he turned twenty one in August, and he went to Las Vegas and had a ton of fun. He also told me that when he saw my name he thought I would be a boy, and I had to reluctantly admit that Madison is traditionally a boy’s name so his guess was logical. Overall, we had a great time and I’m excited to continue meeting with my new friend Zooz!

Here are some pictures of camels that competed in a beauty contest!