Unfortunately, due to an unfortunate illness in her family, my partner Ayaka had to return to Japan. After five meetings, I felt we were beginning to become good friends. Our weekly Friday coffee meetings were something I looked forward to every week. I am grateful that we’re Facebook friends and that we’ll keep in touch, but TCU won’t be the same without her. Hopefully she’ll be able to return to America someday.
My new conversation partner is a lovely woman named Seeho. She is from South Korea and came here to be with her husband, who was transferred to work in Fort Worth. They will stay here for a few years, so she wanted to improve her English, which is already quite good. As an advanced speaker, she can grasp almost everything I say, although she has some difficulty with cultural references (which will just take getting used to).
After about fifteen minutes of getting to know each other, I noticed that she kept glancing at a young man sitting close to us. He had been sipping his drink, eavesdropping on our conversation for several minutes.
“Sangho, where’s your partner?” she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders sheepishly. “I was late, so he probably already left.”
She chastised him for not being on time, and then we invited him to sit with us and talk. Sangho is also from South Korea, although much younger than Sohee. Hearing their banter in a mixture of English and Korean was hilarious—they loved to stretch each other’s nerves to the breaking point. I was like a mediator, steering the conversation in a different direction each time their bickering (mostly Sangho’s) began to escalate.
Sangho is 23 years old, and he came to TCU because his father “strongly encouraged” him to. He tells me this with a combination of resentment and resignation.
“But do you like America?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Fort Worth is too small.”
“Have you ventured over to Dallas yet?”
“Yes…but that is too small, also. It’s all so boring.”
I could understand how the lack of bustle must have been eerie to him. Sohee, however, had a different opinion. She loved the calmness, the quiet. It was so relaxing, she told me, as Sangho snorted.
Sangho did enjoy dominating the conversation, so after answering his questions about tattoo parlors, illegal downloading, clubs, and booze, I tried to steer the topics to something that would better include Sohee. We began talking about literature and films. Like with Ayaka, Harry Potter and Christopher Nolan movies are indeed a universal love, and we spent much time discussing favorite characters.
After realizing we had been talking for over 90 minutes, we reluctantly went our separate directions. Although I do miss Ayaka a lot, I am glad that my new conversation partner (and her guest) was so much fun to talk to. I’m looking forward to seeing her (and hopefully him) for the rest of the semester.
Alaina, I love the way you wrote this! It reads extremely well and the detail makes it tangible! I especially liked your inclusion og dialogue to show, rather than tell, what was going on. Content-wise, in reading your blog I was struck by how sad it was that Ayaka had to return home for a family illness. It made me think about how stressful it must be to be attending school in an entirely different part of the world than your family. Indeed, I stress about the well-being of my family back in Nevada, and I am much closer to tham than Ayaka was to her family in Japan. I truly feel for her and hope that everything ends well. Aside from this, I am glad that you got along with your new conversation partner(s)! In my experience, it took a little time to break the ice and get to know one another, which would have made it difficult to switch halfway through the meetings. It seems as if you made an excellent transition, however! It seems as if it would have been comical to observe your partners' bickering, and you did an amazing job of conveying this humor! I liked your characterization of his topics (tattoos, booze) versus her topics (literature, films.) It helped to put their bickering in context, and add credence to the fact that they were really quite different people with brilliant personalities. In all, I enjoyed reading your blog and smiling along with your experience of your new conversation partners! I hope that you got to meet with them again, and that it went just as well!
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