I met many of his male friends and acquaintances, and he met some of my friends. I am in close contact also with his nuclear family. Despite the hardships in getting Bashar a visa, we traveled three times to Europe for holidays, where he met my family too. The trips themselves were a series of intercultural experiences, not simply because of the encounters with the cultures we visited, but also between us. The intercultural differences between us occasionally caused conflict; solving these conflicts required clarification and mutual understanding.
Our friendship went through all stages and periods that intercultural friendships tend to go through (Lee, 2008). After the first encounter, we found complimentary needs, which moved us to a stage of interaction. A turning point in our relationship moved us to the third stage of involvement. In addition, many of the aspects of our friendship mentioned here pertain to those activities common among intercultural friends (Lee, 2006). The contents and parts of the process of our friendship will be described in further detail in subsequent essays.
