I can't believe I haven't described my Middle Eastern friends on my blog yet! It's time to tell you about my dearest Lebanese, Nathalie and Yasmine, and Egyptian friends, Nour and Taymour.
Before coming to Berkeley, I would never imagine that those cultures had so much in common with mine. Guess what? They do! Middle Easterns are very laid back, and know how to party and enjoy their lives. They value family, community living and a good meal as much as we do. Also, they are never on time - such a mediterranean characteristic...!
The main difference between them and us is that they have much more money to spend and they make sure to spend it excessively. Taymour keeps saying that an Egyptian wedding is more of a competition between families on who gets the most important celebrities to come to their children's weddings than just exchanging the wedding vows. Of course that many Arabic countries other than Egypt and Lebanon have many more differences to Portugal than those two, but these are the ones I am focusing on today.
Let's start by describing the girls. I thought that no girl in ihouse was as close to their moms as I am to mine till I started hanging out with my Middle Eastern girlfriends. Probably because of the distinct role women and men have in those societies (or maybe not), they are all specially connected to their moms and they don't think I am a weirdo for speaking to mine all the time.
Nathalie and Yasmine are both civil engineers, taking their masters degree here in Berkeley. They are not on my program, since I study structural engineering and they study transportation, but we still had the same undergrad education. They are both hard workers, good students and some of the prettiest girls in ihouse. Yasmine is very athletic and does sports every day. She's very self conscious in terms of what she eats. She likes going to bed early and studying in the morning, and she cries every time she is sad or anything didn't go as she had planned. We have so much in common... Nathalie is more laid back. She loves going to bed late, after spending the whole night studying, and she can spend the entire morning in bed. She's always smiling and makes everyone happy. And, man, she really knows how to dance! That's pretty much the only exercise she does but, if I knew how to dance like she does, I would only do it too.
Talking about my dear Nourzita now, I would say she is the greatest. She's always smiling (actually, always laughing), always singing, always calling everyone sweet names, always hugging, always snapchatting... How not to love her? She studies economics, and she is slightly younger than us but no one would say so. She looks like a lady, a pretty determined lady. She's totally unreachable by any boy. Because she is muslim, she cannot drink alcohol. However, when we go clubbing, she looks like the drunkest because she dances nonstop and has tons of energy. Oh man, if someone like clubbing, it's the people from the Middle East! Nour is genuinely sweet and one of the few girls I have never seen competing or being girl-mean to other girls.
Taymour, the only boy who has the honor to be referred in this post, is on the same masters program as Nathalie and Yasmine. He did his undergrad in civil engineering in EPFL in Lausanne, since he has swiss ancestry, and then came to Cal to study transportation. People can tell he belongs to a really wealthy Egyptian family. He wears all the good brands and it is not uncommon to see him pulling off some Louis Vuitton shoes and stuff like that. It annoys him that we make fun of him because of that though, and he is right about that. He's much more than all the expensive stuff he owns. He's a especially friendly and he loves making other people feel good. Did you know he is our Insanity Workouts mentor? Haha. He lost many pounds in Switzerland doing it and introduced us to those workout sessions in the beginning of this semester. Since then, we work out together more than once a week. His dad works for Fifa and is close friends with the Portuguese soccer coach Manuel José, so he might be coming to Portugal soon!
My computer just told me it is running on reserve battery power. It's time to finish this post.
أتحدث إليكم قريبا (talk to you soon).
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