The night before Vera Wang and I were scheduled to meet up again, I saw her with a group of fellow IEP students sitting around a table in Market Square laughing and exchanging stories with each other in Chinese. I went up to the table and said hello to Vera who was completely embarrassed by me. After a solid ten to fifteen seconds of feeling like an awkward parent, she finally introduced me to her friends around the table. We chatted for a few minutes, and then everybody burst into laughter as I walked away from the table. I turned bright red as people at surrounding tables looked at me to investigate what all the students were laughing at. Tomorrow's meeting was going to be interesting.
Immediately after Vera and I sat down at our typical meeting location in Union Grounds, I was quick to ask why all of her friends laughed at me the night before. She giggled a little bit more, and simply said that they thought it was so funny that I came up and started talking to them out of the blue. She said she would be far too shy to come say hello to me if I were with a group of friends. After realizing that my conversation partner was a little shy, my new goal for the rest of the semester became to help Vera Wang break out of her shell. Anytime I see her walking around campus, I now go out of my way to be social and see how she is doing.
After getting the initial confusion out of the way, the two of us decided to catch up since it had been a long time since our first meeting. I told Vera that the football game against University of Texas was approaching rapidly and asked if she would be going. She told me that she couldn’t understand football at all, or really any sports for that matter. I asked if she played any sports back home, but was disappointed to hear that the only thing she had done was swim and run. My next goal for the semester was set in place: I was going to teach Vera Wang how to play racquetball or squash in the recreation center. After sitting down for no more than five minutes, I already had several goals for my conversation partner and I to accomplish together.
The next order of business was to see what her plans were for Fall break. She simply told me that she was planning on going shopping, and nothing much more than that. It was difficult for Vera to explain to me what she was shopping for, but she eventually said new clothes were a necessity. I proceeded to tell her about my plans to hunt in southern Texas. Immediately as I began to explain it, her face turned to sheer terror. I stopped right away, and she simply said, “That is really really gross!” We both burst out into laughter and agreed that I wouldn’t go into further details of my plans. The conversation changed over to what type of food we eat here at TCU compared to back home. I first told her that I am a big seafood fan, but simply can’t eat the fish that is served in Market Square. We talked about how the food here is also much spicier than anything back home. It was quite funny when we both thought it was bizarre that even the nightly pasta contains hot peppers. We also agreed that the home-cooked meals are missed more and more every day we eat at the BLUU.
In the final minutes of our conversation, I reminded Vera that she had asked about fake IDs the first time we met. I asked if she had done any partying recently or tried to get into some of the local bars. She practically cut me off with her quickest response of the afternoon and said, “Oh nooo, I was only kidding last time Chris!!!” Afraid she was going to bite my head off, I quickly took back the questions and apologized. One of the final things she made sure I understood was that she was "by the book," and didn’t want to engage in much more than studying and quietly hanging out with her friends. She explained her strict study and sleep schedule, which seemed incredibly intense to me. Nevertheless, it was a great meeting with Vera Wang, the fashion icon herself.
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