Conversation Partner Two: The Importance of Education and Friends

This past Wednesday I met Maram again for coffee at Union Grounds. I wanted to know more about what it’s like being in the Intensive English Program, so I asked her lots of questions about her classes. She told me about how she takes grammar, reading, writing, and workshops. Her favorite class is grammar, although it has become much more difficult this year and the tests are hard. I related her difficulty in learning English to my five years of learning Spanish in high school. Understanding Spanish grammar was difficult, and I know the English language is even more complicated. I can’t imagine trying to learn English, much the less being transported into an English-speaking environment so quickly. I am so impressed by her ability to understand and her willingness and want to learn more.

After we talked about grammar, I asked her if she was reading any books for her reading class. She pulled a book out of her backpack to show me. It was an autobiography about Malala. I had heard Malala’s name before but didn’t fully know her story. Maram told me about everything Malala had done and how incredible this young girl was. If you don’t know anything about Malala, she is a seventeen year old girl who has fought for women’s education in her home country of Pakistan against the Taliban. We talked about how inspiration Malala’s story was and how important education is.

On the subject of education, I asked Maram what her favorite part about teaching was. She spent a year teaching a kindergarten class in Saudi Arabia before coming to the United States. Her favorite part about teaching was watching a child’s face light up when they began to understand something or learned something new. I love hearing Maram talk about teaching because although she can’t express it with many words, you can see her passion for it in her eyes.

Throughout our conversation we also talked about what we did on our snow days. She talked about watching TV and cooking, so I asked her what her favorite show was to watch in English. Her response almost made me scream. Maram’s favorite English TV show, Friends, is also my all-time favorite TV show. It was so fun to bond with her over one of my favorite things. Before our first conversation, I was worried we would have nothing in common. It has been so much fun to discover how wrong I was and find things that we both share whether it be a love of food or a similar taste in TV shows.

Laughter Blog One: “I Wore My Onesie to Homecoming”

Has anybody ever told you that gullible is written on the ceiling? Hopefully you didn’t believe it. Sadly, I seem to be the type of person that always falls for it. While it wasn’t a word written on the ceiling, my friend managed to convince me of something that most people would’ve never believed.

Alex is from Arkansas, however, being fairly new friends I was unsure if this was true, so I asked him one day while a group of us were hanging out. Alex looked at me with a smirk and informed me that I was very wrong because he was from Colorado. He then pointed at my friend Brooke, who I knew for a fact was from Colorado, and told me he went to school with her. She confirmed his statement, and as a trusting person I naturally believed her. Apparently I missed the quizzical look she gave Alex as I turned my head. The rest of the room did not. I proceeded to ask Alex if he knew Brooke well before TCU, which seemed plausible because the two of them were already good friends. He said they did and that they even went to homecoming together freshmen year. Once again, Brooke confirmed. He then proceeded to tell me that Brooke actually asked him to the dance. Brooke is a confident and outgoing person, so while the idea surprised me, I didn’t disbelieve it. Once again, she confirmed the statement and I had no reason to disagree. The other people in this room had recently become quite interested in our conversation. I figured everybody just wanted to hear about their homecoming experience together too, so it didn’t faze me. To top off his tale, Alex then added that he refused to wear a suit and actually wore his onesie pajamas to the dance. I immediately lost it, as did the rest of the room. While I was laughing at the idea of Alex in his onesie, however, the rest of the room was laughing at me. Brooke and Alex joined in on the uncontrollable laughter and I soon realized my blunder. The room proceeded to laugh incessantly for what seemed like forever.

When I think of this occasion, my first thought about the reason for laughter is the superiority theory. Most people in the room probably felt better about themselves because they knew what was going on while I was left in the dark. Another reason that fits is the incongruity theory. Who would’ve guessed the story would end with Alex in his onesie at homecoming? While I think these account for the laughter in general, it takes more than that to become an uncontrollable fit. I think that the dynamic of a group causes that. Had I watched an episode on TV of this exact same incident I would not have laughed so hard, but it’s the relationship we all share that made the occasion special. We bonded over the incident and we will be able to refer back to it and laugh about it together for years. What’s special about laughter is this ability to bring people together. While Alex tricked me and I could’ve easily been upset with him, instead we bonded over the incident and a friendship was formed.

Conversation Partner One: A Bond Thanks to Food

After about a week of back and forth communication with seemingly no finite information, my conversation partner, Maram, and I finally decided on a date. Wednesday came and I arrived at Union Grounds at one o’clock, anxiously awaiting our first meeting. I was nervous about how well we would be able to communicate or if we would have anything in common to talk about. For about five minutes I sat there awkwardly, hoping she wasn’t sitting right next to me or around the corner and that I had totally missed her. Finally, a young girl walked through the door and made eye contact with me that suggested she was looking for somebody too. I got out of my chair and cautiously asked if she might be Maram, to which she responded with a sweet smile and happy yes.

Our first introductions went well, which began to put my fears at ease. She even gave me a box of sweets from her home country! This sparked an idea for a topic of conversation in my mind, so I mentioned her being from Saudi Arabia. She immediately looked startled and asked if I knew anybody else from there. I said no and that she was my first, which made her look even more confused. She then asked how I could tell where she was from and I immediately understood her confusion. I laughed for a minute and then explained that the email I received with her contact information also informed me where she was from. We then laughed about it for a minute together, which eased my mind completely from any fears I had before. I asked her about how she ended up in Texas and about her family. I learned that she was living here with her brother, who is also studying in Texas. She also has two sisters. I asked if it was hard being away from her parents, which are still in Saudi Arabia, and she said yes. I then told her my parents were not in Texas with me either and we talked about the difficulties of being far away from home, especially since it is the first time being gone for so long for both of us. After we talked about our families I asked her what she was studying. I was surprised to find out she already has her bachelors in education and is currently studying to get her masters. She told me about how she loves children and wants to go back to Saudi Arabia to teach. Although her English wasn’t strong enough to say much, I could see her passion for children when she talked.

Once we passed through the basic conversation topics, our meeting got a little awkward. We both sat there, unsure of what to say. In any situation, my usual go to topic is food, so I asked her if she liked the food here in America. Our conversation exploded from there. We talked about all the types of food we liked and disliked, what we liked to cook, how food differed here from Saudi Arabia, and all the restaurants around town we’d been to. We laughed about our shared inability for cooking and our understanding of the awesomeness that is cooking pasta because of how simple it is. We bonded over our shared love for Tex-Mex and sushi, too. Sadly, our conversation had to come to a close as I had a class at two. While some communication was rocky and the occasional word was lost in translation, it was interesting to find commonalities with somebody from such a different background. For such a short period of time, I felt like I was really beginning to understand her and I am looking forward to getting to know even more about her in the future. If I learned anything at this lunch however, it would have to be that when in doubt, food is always the answer.

Learning Experiences One: Thinking Outside the Box

This semester I am taking an honors course entitled Dance in World Cultures. Last week, the professor began the class period with what seemed like a simple question: “what is dance?” In our assigned groups we were asked to come up with our own definition of what we thought dance was. This proved to be more difficult than any of us expected. How do you define such an ambiguous term? My group eventually settled on the definition to be “movement as an expression.” Each group then presented their own definition. Some were more specific and others just as open ended. As a class we discussed the downfalls of each definition. For example, many groups included rhythm in their definition. It was pointed out, however, that not all dance is done to music, and some dance is arrhythmic. So that doesn’t work. Others defined dance as something a person experiences, but then our professor showed us a video of a dog dancing and a video of a boat ballet (interesting, I know.) While no two definitions were alike, all of them included the same two words: movement and expression. Once again, our teacher played the devil’s advocate and informed us of a famous dance in which the performer stood on the stage for three minutes and did not move and that was the dance. The question then arose, “is that technically dance?” Any qualification to a definition was somehow or another disproved. Our definition began to look something like: movement, or lack thereof, that may express art or emotion. Basically the vaguest definition ever. Lack thereof? May? Some students argued that it isn’t dance if there is no movement, and that the definition should simply say movement. Others disagreed. As a class we realized that this was so difficult because dance is a perspective. What one person defines as dance another might not, very much like how people define art. What is trash to one is art to another. So if that’s the case, how do you define something that is different for each individual? That class period very closely paralleled discussions held in this Literature and Civilizations class. While in this class we tried to define different terms such as literature and laughter, the idea is very much the same. Common terms and ideas we use and experience daily are somehow incredibly difficult to define and that is because they are what they are perceived to be. What one considers to be so, another may not. All of these discussions of ambiguous yet common terms have required me to think critically in abstract ways. There is no simple or right answer. To be cliché about it, I have been forced to “think outside the box.” These questions have also caused me to be more perceptive of others and their opinions. Quite often during these discussions I had an opinion that somebody strongly disagreed with. While I firmly believed what I thought, there is technically no wrong answer and what another thinks is in no way wrong even though they perceive it differently than I do. Who would’ve guessed something as simple as dancing could cause so much contemplation?