Conversation
One:
I will be completely honest. Before
this first conversation I felt that I would be completely out of my element.
The only thing helping me was the fact that I was going with Elle. If it were
to be just Frances and me, I could tell you exactly how it would have
gone—awkwardly. Meeting new people and making conversation (aka small talk) is
not my forte; not to mention, it makes me a nervous wreck. To add on top of
that, it is someone that may or may not be able to communicate efficiently with
me. If I wouldn’t have been able to understand what she was saying, then my
automatic go-to is to nervously laugh. However, I could not do that in this
case because God forbid she said something that was not meant to be laughed at.
All these thoughts were running through my head consistently the day before and
the day of the dinner I was going to. To say the least, I was apprehensive.
As dinner time approached, there was
another thing weighing on my mind as I was waiting. I had no idea whether or
not Frances was a girl or a guy. My first instinct was to look up their Chinese
name on Google and see if it was a girl or guy’s name. That did not help
either. Like Frances, the Chinese name was also one that could go both ways.
The next thing I did was email her asking what they were wearing so that I
could identify them. Frances emailed back saying “a black t-shirt and a red
cap.” At that point, I was almost certain it was a guy. Later on, Elle and I
were walking to Dutch’s (which I was excited about because I had not had it all
semester) and I saw a person with a red cap and a black shirt on. It was a
girl. I had it so wrong.
We sat down for dinner and Elle’s
partner, Cindy, and Frances, who are coincidentally friends, both asked me what
they should get. I said they should get the burgers, but I warned them that
they were pretty big and that I usually do not finish them. Much to my
surprise, Frances, who is quite petite, ate the entire burger. I was in shock.
The conversation flowed greatly; there were points of awkwardness, but that was
to be expected. We talked about each other’s families and boyfriends. Also, we
talked about their home and whether they liked it better here. They both said,
almost instantaneously, that the food back home was much better than here. They
also mentioned going back to China one day. Overall, it was a great dinner and
made me excited for the next time that we would meet.
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