Dinner With the Others

October 10, 2008

The other night I went to a Muslim house for dinner.  I was happy to hear that we were all going to go in small groups.  I’m really like all of the people in my group so that made me excited to go have dinner with them and a Muslim family.  We were picked up around 7pm to go to dinner.  The man who picked us up was really nice and wanted to talk to us about everything.  It was nice to have someone so interested in talking to us and asking us questions.  We arrived at the home about an hour later.  It was a nice place and the food was really good.  The thing that I didn’t really enjoy was the conversation.  It was interesting to hear what our hosts thought about the United States, but there was a point that I stopped listening to them.  They had a lot of negative things to say about the United States government.  They were always tying to let us know that they approved of us but not of our government.  This was hard for me because I feel like the US government has played a role in shaping me into the person I am today.  I don’t always agree with the things that the US government does but I can’t say that I want the government to completely change.  It was hard for me to sit there and listen to them badmouth my country.  I will always put the United States before any other country.  It is my home and I love living in the United States.  A main part of our conversation was about the 9/11 attacks on the US.  This family believes that the attacks were a conspiracy.  They believe that the attacks were from the “Jews” or from the US government so that there would be a reason for our current war in the Middle East.  I just sat there and listened to them.  I didn’t really know what to say.  I still don’t know what to say about what happened that night.