Conversation Partner: The Beginning

In stereotypical college student fashion, procrastination has made me blog about my first meeting with Youness a week late. (However we've already met twice, so I at least there's efficiency in that!) So as you read this, please do me the favor of imagining I wrote this a week ago and that I'm NOT about to post back-to-back blogs about our meetings.

My first meeting with Youness was on the 14th, and we met up in Union Grounds for coffee. It started off awkward because we didn't exchange numbers or know what the other looked like, so we ended up standing about three feet away from each other without knowing it for a solid five minutes. Now I had been told by pervious students that these meetings usually don't take very long, about twenty to thirty minutes, because the language barrier gets tiresome for both parties and, frankly, you run out of things to say. This had given me some comfort because I was admittedly somewhat apprehensive. Language barriers terrify me. Not because of a lack of cultural relativism, but because I don't like to make people feel uncomfortable, which is something I excel at. If there was a Nobel Prize for awkwardness I definitely would have received it by now because my life is a combination of dropping things and uncomfortable lulls in conversation. The last thing I wanted to do was make my partner feel any more out of place than I know I would feel being in an unfamiliar country trying to learn the language, and I was almost positive I was going to fail. Fortunately, our initial hiccup was the only awkward part.

Youness and I covered so many topics, it's hard to recall them all. We talked about family, sports we liked to watch and play, places we had visited, languages we (I should say he) spoke. He was impressed that I actually knew where Morocco was, because apparently many people just assume his home country is in Spain. He impressed me with just about everything about him. He comes from an engineering background and has a degree in mathematics, and he's looking to get a masters here at TCU. Before moving to the US he spent eight years living in France, so he speaks fluent French. This is on top of speaking his native language of Berber and learning Arabic in school. And now, living in Texas only since January, he's learning English as his fourth language. Listening to Youness speak left me under the impression he had been here since last semester, so learning he hadn't even been in the US for two months astounded me. His accent was think but his fluency and comprehension was incredible, to the point where he even used a few American idioms. I did succeed in making him feel awkward because I praised him for his accomplishments with English. Youness is a very humble person and was embarrassed when I commented on how amazing he was, but I honestly couldn't believe it.

Our conversation went on for an hour and only ended because I had another engagement I needed to attend. In that time I learned a lot about the weather and culture of Morocco, and how the three cultures he had experienced compared to one another. I took Language and Identity in Cultures last semester with Dr. Tracy Williams, and we focused on how language can change and impact in different ways because of different cultural expectancies and influences. I loved the class and it made me very curious, so I had plenty of questions about what Youness thought of  the comparisons and contrasts of the three countries he had experienced. I was honestly sad when we had to say good-bye, but excited that it had gone so well and I hadn't embarrassed myself or spilled anything. (It's the small victories in life that keep us going.)

In short, my initial worries were completely unfounded. I got lucky on this project by being assigned to someone that I genuinely get along and could talk about a variety of topics with, which is what is key to having engaging conversations. I can honestly say that right now it seems this will be more than just a class assignment and actually develop into a friendship.