Travel and Life after TCU (Meeting with Omar Part 5)

As the semester draws to an end, so do my meetings with Omar. Yesterday I met with Omar in the TCU Bookstore. Considering Thanksgiving is right around the corner, we immediately began to talk about the holiday and what activities we were planning on doing. We had talked about this briefly last time, and I remembered that Omar was excited about potentially going to Las Vegas for the holiday. He told me yesterday that he thinks he still will be going to Las Vegas. Omar is eager to be able to visit the city for the first time. Omar asked me what my plans are for Thanksgiving and I told him that my family is flying here to Fort Worth this year to celebrate. The main reason is for the Baylor football game on Friday. It will be interesting because we have no real plans for Thanksgiving dinner. This will be a new twist to the traditional Thanksgiving festivities my family normally partakes in, but my family is equally, if not more, excited to switch things up and have Thanksgiving in Texas this year.

Later in our conversation, Omar told me that his English exam is on December 12. He has to pass this to be able to apply to graduate schools and attend schools internationally. He is nervous for it and still has a large amount of studying to do, but he hopes he will be able to pass. If he is able to do well on the test, then Omar plans to go back home to Mexico and find a graduate school to attend. As a result, this will be Omar’s first, and last, semester here at TCU.

Omar is extremely curious about the United States and experiencing all it has to offer. Therefore, in our conversation, we chatted about the best cities to visit in the United States. I told him about iconic cities such as New York, Hollywood, and New Orleans. However, Omar was the most interested in my hometown in Arizona. I am from Scottsdale, Arizona, so I told him all about it. It is a great place to visit and it does attract a lot of tourists. Especially during the winter, since Scottsdale has great weather. I told Omar that if he likes to golf, hike, shop, and eat delicious food, then Scottsdale would be a great place for him to visit. By the end of my long speech about Scottsdale, it sounded like I had done my job and convinced Omar to visit the city at some point in his life.

After Omar and I discussed the best cities in the United States, we got talking about the different types of people in each state. I casually brought up in our conversation that each state has a different character. Omar thought this was surprising because he just assumed that all Americans had the same general personality. I went on to explain to him that people from California are much different from people who live in Texas, while those who live in Boston or Chicago are much different from people who live in Texas or California. Basically, each state has its own quirks and tends to cater towards a certain type of person. Omar then told me that this occurs in Mexico, too. He said that people who live in North Mexico are much different from the South Mexicans. There are also smaller differences in personalities among regions. I thought this was interesting how this change in character throughout a country occurs in Mexico as well. I naïvely assumed that all Mexicans had the alike personalities, just as Omar had thought the same of Americans. This widened my perspective of the world, as I’m sure it also did for Omar, and made me realize that other countries are diverse and different, just like the United States.

Getting to know Omar has truly been a humbling experience. Not only has it been amazing getting to know a talented and driven individual, it has been eye-opening learning about other cultures. Before I met Omar, I thought I was an open-minded individual that had a decent grasp on world events and cultures. However, after my conversations with Omar, I know that this is far from true. I have so much to learn about the world and how other cultures work. Thanks to my time with Omar, I want to experience many different cultures during my lifetime.