Zachary Backes - CP3

I got a surprise visit from Faisal on Wednesday at work, he had brought two of his friends to show them Lofty Pursuits (which is like three steps away from being the new CIES break room apparently). Luckily we were pretty slow so I had the chance to serve them and then talk for a bit. He wanted me to introduce myself to his friends in Arabic which was cool because Muhammad actually speaks Masri, the Egyptian dialect of Arabic, and still seemed to understand me. However, I could hardly understand him when he spoke to me (again going back to this weeks listening lesson).

It was pretty fun sampling out all the different Ice-creams to them, they all "thought" they knew what they wanted but my favorite part of the job is to get people to try stuff they have never tried before and I'm pretty sure I turned Faisal into a Peanut Butter and Jelly ice-cream addict (/pride). Also chocolate chili pepper was a big hit, Muhammad got a shake of it and I added a little more spicy chocolate syrup on his request. The four of us sat down for a couple minutes while the store was dead. They were just headed to see the new Avenger's movie which was kind of surprising since Faisal and I had talked about comics before and he said he didn't know much about them. But Rahmin, his other friend, was a huge fan it seemed. He told me he used to buy comics online at his work back in his country and wait eagerly until they shipped, Marvel was his favorite (good man).

We got an interesting topic of "Heroes" for a little bit and it was interesting what they described as their heroes. I had mentioned that one of mine was Hayao Miyazaki, acclaimed animator and director in Japan and Faisal floored me by listing off three of his favorite movies by him (An American and a Saudi bonding over Japanese films - kind of awesome IMO). Muhammad said his hero was an author he had read in Egypt who was pretty revolutionary and spoke out a lot against religious persecution and regimes.

It was really nice to take a break and enjoy some conversation and it left me thinking about it for the rest of the shift. The conversation was pretty casual and while there were still some language gaps we were able to circumvent them easily enough. I'm thinking that working in larger groups helps facilitate more conversational language then the back and forth of a one-on-one that can feel very tutor-ish. All in all it was a great way to pass a shift, and I hope they come back the next time I work =]