Meeting with Vera #5 - "Double-Date"

A few days before Thanksgiving, Vera and I decided to meet up for the fifth time. Rather than going to our usual place in Union Grounds though, Dan Arndst and I coordinated to have a “double date” with our conversation partners. We talked a week beforehand about setting something up, simply because both our conversation partners seemed to be friends. Vera and Tristan had each tagged along to the other’s conversation partner meetings, so we thought it would be fun to just have a group meeting! Initially we expected to have Tristan play piano for us, but ended up just getting a nice afternoon snack at Market Square instead.

After Dan and I met up with Tristan at a table in the main area of the cafeteria, Vera texted me to ask if it would be okay to bring another one of her friends. What a social butterfly! Sure enough she tagged along with her friend named Amy, who is another Intensive English Program student. When I first met Amy, she seemed to just be a normal foreign student like Vera, but it turns out that she was far from the normal student. She actually got married a year ago and commutes to TCU from her home. Her husband owns a frozen yogurt shop nearby, and she seems to be very proud of it. It turns out that Vera and Amy have several classes together, which is how they know each other. Amy is from Seoul, South Korea, so their only common language is English, which I thought was very cool.

After chatting for a bit and getting acquainted with one another, I noticed that Vera had a large band-aid on the backside of her hand. I asked what had happened, and it turns out that she had just received a sports injury about thirty minutes before meeting up with us. She and Amy decided that they wanted to try the rock climbing wall in the TCU Recreation Center, and did it together. After struggling to ascend it, Vera slipped and cut her hand on one of the handholds. We all exchanged laughs about the simple mistake, but only because I told her I probably would have done the same thing.

After that, we got into the topic of social media applications other than Facebook and Twitter. Dan and I described new programs like Snapchat and Instagram, and gave the three IEP students a couple demonstrations on our phones. I thought it was unusual that they had never heard of these popular applications, but I guess it’s not that strange since they are mostly limited to America and Europe. After we showed them though, Vera created an Instagram which she says she wants to start using. The main topic of discussion though was our individual plans for Thanksgiving. As I had expected to hear, neither Vera, Tristan, nor Amy had any plans for the holiday. They were all just staying local, but said that they would most likely spend the day with their friends in the TCU area who were also staying in the neighborhood. Dan and I talked a bit about our own family traditions, which fascinated our conversation partners.

Finally, our conversation was stopped short because everybody had somewhere to be later that afternoon, but we talked about each other’s plans for the future after graduating from school. The consensus with all five of us was that we wanted to work and live within America, simply because of how great the opportunities are here. Everybody mentioned that they liked being near a major city, so it will be interesting to see how our individual plans work out in the time to come. After saying goodbye to Amy and Tristan, I gave Vera a hug and we parted ways. I know our meeting after Thanksgiving will be bittersweet, but only because it will be my last time seeing Vera for the semester.

Meeting with Vera #4 - The Piano Man

During the first few days of November, I scheduled my fourth meeting with Vera Wang. The one major thing I began to notice about her was that she always had free time to meet up, and was willing to meet with me whenever I asked. I don't know whether our schedules just happen to match up perfectly, or if she doesn't have much to do outside of the classroom. Nonetheless, I am very pleased to have a conversation partner who is free to meet with me. After all, there have been numerous stories about other conversations being missing in action. As I approached Union Grounds, I was unsure what Vera and I would talk about, simply because we seemed to have exhausted almost every potential conversation topic in the past month. However, this all changed when she arrived with her friend named Tristan, a brilliant piano player who also originated from China.

I was not expecting Vera to bring somebody to join along in our conversation, but was pleasantly surprised when she did! After spending a lot of time introducing one another, I really enjoyed speaking with Tristan. He definitely speaks much more fluent English, and actually brought up various topics that he wanted to get my opinions on. The most interesting thing about Tristan is that he is actually a fantastic piano player. After explaining that he lives in Irvine, TX and commutes to TCU each day, I asked why he bothered to live so far out of the way. It turns out that he is a professional piano player who happens to have a manager in the Dallas area. His manager had attended one of his concerts in Beijing a few years ago, and ended up offering Tristan a contract to come play and perform in the United States. With an opportunity like that, Tristan ended up signing with him, and currently lives in an apartment provided by his manager. Being a proper businessman, Tristan immediately handed over his business card and told me to check out some of his work. Since getting back from our conversation, I have gone online and heard several pieces that he performed. He is fantastic.

The most interesting thing about our conversation was how much more willing Vera was to engage in conversation with us. Rather than being shy and bashful, she ended up telling a plethora of stories when topics arose. A great conversation we had with each other regarded the freedom of people in the United States versus that of the people in China. Both Vera and Tristan noted that they loved the fact that they were now allowed to have Facebook accounts in America, simply because it was not allowed in China. The other thing they mentioned was how difficult it was to be granted permission to travel to America for college. It was apparently a very long and painstaking process to obtain government approval to come here, but well worth it in the end. Tristan said that the technology here is also much easier to access, like Apple products for example. I know that due to riots and people storming stores in China, it is not very common for Chinese people to have iPhones, unless they purchase them overseas. Vera told me that since attending TCU she has purchased an iPhone and finds it very difficult to live without it. With social media that she had never accessed like Facebook and Instagram, it is very difficult to stay focused on school work.

Another funny conversation we all had was in regards to Halloween. I asked if either of them had dressed up to celebrate the American holiday, and only Vera admitted to it. Due to the required Colby Halloween festivities, she and her French roommate stood at their dorm room and handed out candy to local children for hours on end. The other thing she mentioned was that she decided to dress up as a vampire, which I thought was hilarious to imagine. All in all though, Vera concluded that Colby Halloween was a terrible experience because of how many people came by her room, and because of the amount of candy she ended up consuming.

In all, I really enjoyed my conversation with both Vera and Tristan. I think the two of them having each other's presence made them much more comfortable while talking with me (I mean come on, look at how ferocious I seem). I hope to follow Tristan's journey as a professional piano player in the future, and will hopefully meet up with him in the near future. On the other hand, I am also looking forward to seeing Vera in the coming weeks, as we finish up our semester together.