Conversation Partner Take 1

Meeting with my conversation partner for the very first time was a very interesting experience. His name is Jun and he is from South Korea. It took a little bit of time to get ahold of him because he doesn’t use TCU email but going through Britt Luby we finally were able to make contact with him. Both he and I live in Milton Daniel Hall so it wasn't very hard or inconvenient to meet up. However, things didn’t go as smoothly as I anticipated. I knew that we weren't going to be instant friends. It wasn’t like this was some unexpected relationship that happened. We were both being “forced” in a sense to meet up with each other. I still thought that after a little talk it would be enjoyable. I looked forward to it, thinking I would learn a lot about South Korea and just gaining some cultural awareness. It was an awkward encounter from the moment I said hello. I tried to engage in him and ask him about himself and his experience here in the United States. I think the most I got over that topic from him was that he doesn’t like it here and cannot wait to get back to South Korea. I was able to find out a little information about him personally. He is currently studying Civil Engineering back home. He also is a single child and one of his favorite hobbies is to go biking. Other than that I didn’t get very much information out of him. I wasn’t able to learn anything about South Korea which was disappointing because I thought that would be great information. Instead it was a bunch of one word answers. I didn’t get a single question asked about myself either. The only time he ever seemed to engage me was to ask what I meant when I said something in English. I was more than happy to explain what I was trying to express but his facial expressions seemed to say that he didn’t really care. I could tell he was very uncomfortable throughout this entire process and would much rather leave. I was sitting there thinking how am I going to be able to meet with this guy five more times in the semester when I have asked him almost every question I can think of without playing off of our conversations. It got to a point where I just sat there silently because I didn’t know what else to talk about. Hopefully in the future meetings he will open up and talk to me.