Keith: The Initial Meeting

            The small amount of Chinese I’ve learned has finally came in handy! On Thursday this past week, I met with Keith the first time. We met at Union Grounds. When I asked him where he was from and he said China (near Shanghai), I got very excited. I have been practicing some Chinese phrases over the last year as well as learning from one of my best friends as much about the culture as I could. My hope in sharing some of this: to make him more comfortable with me and make myself more relatable to him.

            I like to think it helped spark our friendship! Though some of the phrases were weird to just spout off – I don’t care! It bridged the culture gap just that I could say something! He asked how I learned my small amount of Chinese and I told him about my friend. He asked me her name. I gave it both in English and in Chinese, and I think it shocked him. However, it resulted in his telling me his Chinese name. As a reward for my excellent pronunciation, he asked me to call him his Chinese name. (Rather he said, “You say it better than other Americans. You can call me Yangyi.”)

            After the initial awkwardness we started talking and talked for an hour with minimal uncomfortable pauses where both of us tried to look anywhere but each other as we scrambled for a new topic that we might be able to talk about. In short, it went well. We talked about friends, music, sports, China, and movies. At one point we actually talked about each other’s dating life, but we both were able to find a new topic quickly enough for that not to have time to get awkward.

            Because I have had other friends in the IEP and at this part of the semester some of their English wasn’t very good at all, I wasn’t expecting much. Keith exceeded all of my expectations by far. Though he had some trouble expressing ideas and the conversation was mostly intuitive, we were really able to discuss a wide variety of things. There was about 3 times that I would say something like, “Did you see the petting zoo on Tuesday?” and he would say, “I like zoos and animals. Did you see they had a zoo out in the grass?” When this happened I just acted as if the topic was originating from him, acted excited, and asked him if he went to it. He excitedly showed me pictures of him at the petting zoo in the Commons.

           

            Smart phones are useful tools. I asked if he like rollercoasters. He wasn’t sure what I was talking about. Google Images saved the day! I pulled up pictures of Six Flags and he started bubbling with desire to tell me so many things. From what I gather, there is a theme park close to him home.


            At the end, we walked out together and through the Commons. It all ended with a picture and discussion about meeting Tuesday. Can't wait!