An Afternoon with Ruben: Part II (Meeting 6)

       I have two cousins that go to TCU and every Friday, we and a few other friends from home meet up and talk and eat dinner. This Friday, we were going to Fusion, a hookah cafe, then to Fuzzy’s for dinner and I decided to invite Ruben along because we wouldn’t be able to meet the week of Thanksgiving and because my cousin always talked about how she spoke Spanish really well and I wanted to give her the ultimate test. While waiting for my cousin to arrive, I got to learn more about Ruben’s Venezuelan friends, Jane and Lina. Lina is nineteen years old and is in the highest level of English that the ESL program offers, therefore the closest to fluency. I had noticed that whenever Ruben or Jane were explaining something and couldn’t think of the right words to say, they would turn to Lina and say something in Spanish, then Lina would come out with the word they wanted. Jane is twenty-seven years old and was a journalist in Venezuela. However, she explained, Hugo Chavez was not fond of journalists because of the way he was represented in the media and therefore journalism work was hard to find for June in Venezuela. Therefore, she moved to America and is planning to continue journalism here until she finds the right opportunity to return. She has been married for one year (and wears her ring on her right hand, as they do in Venezuela), but does not have any children yet, although she plans to soon. I also found out she is a Spanish conversation partner, helping someone with their Spanish like I help Ruben with his English, and this someone is Mr. David Belpedio, who may or may not ever read this blog.

       Once my cousin arrived, the Spanish began. Even though she had been out of practice for a semester, my cousin definitely held her own and Ruben later told me he was extremely impressed with her Spanish. As a side note, however, the three South Americans had to slow down when they talked by at least three times the speed they would normally talk. But talking to my cousin Julia after, it was amazing not only how much the language came back to her talking to native speakers, but also how excited she got about it again, asking me to help her set up a Spanish conversation partner like Mr. Belpedio has.

       We then went to Fuzzy’s, which none of the three had been to before. Standing in line, they all asked me what they should get and I suggested the baja tacos or burritos. We had a good five minute conversation about how “chips and queso” was not the restaurant trying to be authentic but that most Americans called the hot, cheesy dip “queso,” even though in Spanish that encompasses all cheese. They also laughed at the appetizer “borrachio” beans, which in Spanish means drunk. We had a delicious meal and then Ruben drove me back home. During the car ride, we got stuck at a light for about four minutes, in which time he explained to me every Columbian would have ran it by then. He said nobody obeys the traffic laws there, and that, for example, if someone got pulled over drunk, but offered the police officer a bribe, he could get off scot-free. After seeing the traffic in Mexico, I was not surprised that this kind of corruption existed in Columbia, but it is still crazy to think how different American culture must be to them compared to a culture in which bribing a police officer is a regular occurrence. After a good four hours with my Columbian conversation partner and his Venezuelan friends, I felt that I had learned an amazing amount more about these people and their cultures and hopefully they were able to come out feeling more confident about their English skills.

An Afternoon with Ruben: Part I (Meeting 5)

       I met with Ruben for the fifth time on Friday and with him were his two friends from Venezuela, Lina and June. We met at Barnes and Noble again, which has become the regular now. I hadn’t eaten lunch yet, so I brought along a Potbelly’s sandwich. He asked what was in it and I told him ham, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, mayonnaise and jalepenos. To my surprise, at the thought of eating jalepenos, Ruben cringed and explained to me how much he hates hot food. I had just assumed that any person from Mexico or South America would be a fan of salsa or any of its counterparts.

       I then asked him what kind of food he would usually eat in Columbia and he told me that they ate a variety of everything, just like us. He said he would have burgers, hot dogs, pasta, pizza, and of course, quesadillas and tacos. One food he said that might be considered a Columbian specialty was an arepa, which is like a thick pancake with butter and other spices on top.

       We then talked about each other’s plans for Thanksgiving. He said that he is meeting up with his aunt and grandma, who both live in the area and just spending time with family for the weekend. He asked why we had a holiday called Thanksgiving, and I told him the whole story about the Pilgrims and Indians, but that the main reason is to step back and realize what is important in your life and to give thanks for those particular things. While the holiday itself is not globally honored, being able to give thanks for the blessings in one’s life is a universal quality that Ruben and everyone can appreciate.

       From there, Ruben asked me if I knew of any good bars around the area. I told him that I knew of Old Rips and Rock Bottom, but that I didn’t know if they were any good because I was only nineteen. He thought for a second and then remembered that the drinking age here was twenty-one, compared to eighteen in his home country. He told me that he thinks America is extremely uptight about the drinking age laws and that he believes it should be switched to eighteen here as well. I told him I agree. While I can understand why the drinking age is twenty-one, I still agree with my eighty-seven year old grandpa that if someone can fight, defend, and die for his/her country, then he or she should be able to have a beer. Ruben told me that while the drinking age is eighteen, most Columbians begin younger. For example, Ruben began drinking when he was fourteen. Based on our societal norms, this sounds disastrous and sad. Generally, underage drinking is associated with troublemakers, bound for a future not as good as what could have been. However, when I look at Ruben now, he is an incredibly nice guy, has a solid job, a degree in engineering--basically, he seems to have a great life. It is interesting to see the perceptions of other cultures about certain subjects that America takes extremely seriously.

Convo Partner Meeting #4: Friday, 11/11

       Ruben and I are really starting to get to know each other at this point and I can actually see many improvements in his English. One thing specifically that he has asked about every time we have met is English tenses and how well he uses them correctly when he is talking to me. In our first meeting, some sentences he would say would be similar to, “I graduate in May 2009,” and even though I knew what he was saying, the tense on the verb would be incorrect. Now however, he is even using conjunctions with his tenses, such as won’t, couldn’t, and can’t. It is just interesting to watch as someone moves closer and closer to fluency in a language.

       I asked him what he was doing this weekend and he said he was going to mostly relax and maybe take his sister to “the cinema” to see Paranormal Activity 3. He then asked me what I was doing and I told him that my fraternity was having a party that I might go to. For some reason, it did not even cross my mind that Ruben wouldn’t know what a fraternity was. When explaining fraternities to someone who has never heard of them, it is difficult to describe without getting some weird looks and a lot of questions. “A brotherhood of men that share many of the same ideals who are bound together by the sacred bonds of ritual.” Ruben really didn’t know what to think when I told him about it. I was laughing. It really did sound sketchy and weird. And to top it off, our name was made up of Greek letters, which Ruben had no knowledge of. I think right when I told him, he believed I was part of some secret cult on TCU’s campus. But after I explained the various things we do around campus and how many students at TCU join fraternities and sororities, he began to grasp what being in a fraternity entails. He told me that at Columbian universities, there is nothing like this and most stress is put on the academics, although he didn’t seem completely against the idea of fraternities (after he knew they weren’t cults).

       Overall though, I find it riveting to explain parts of American culture that Ruben does not know about yet because he is learning about our country and able to compare it back to the country he knows best. Vice versa, it is always fascinating to learn about other countries, like Columbia, because it allows us to view our lives from a different perspective than that which we’ve always known and grown up with.

Cathedral Experience

       The story Cathedral, written in 1981 by Raymond Carver, was my favorite story of the semester so far. This was the story about a man and woman who are visited by one of the woman’s longtime friends who happens to be blind. Even though the man’s name is never mentioned, I loved how real the narrator felt to me. Because he narrates the whole story, we are able to experience what he experienced and get a personal look at this story from his perspective. I believe Carver did this on purpose to allow us to become more personally invested in this story, as if, at the end of of the story, we were sitting on the couch with the three characters, rather than looking at it from an outside third party.

       With that said, the narrator has a sad life. He hates his job, but has no choice except to continue with it. His wife is uninterested in him. He stays up as late as possible to watch television and smoke marijuana because he doesn’t want to go to sleep. He doesn’t believe in anything. His life means nothing to him. He is just going through the motions.

       This is when Robert comes into his life. Robert is admired and loved by his wife and he cannot seem to understand that. According to the narrator, the blind are extremely different than “normal” people like him. For example, he finds it difficult to believe that Robert could ever love a woman or be loved by a woman because of his lack of sight. Because he cannot know what she looks like and because she cannot know what he thinks of the way she looks, the narrator cannot comprehend that a blind man is capable of such a connection. However, despite the fact that the narrator looks down on the blind man as crippled, he is still jealous of the connection that this man has with his wife. He is ignorant of the fact that he is the one holding himself back. The narrator could have this same kind of connection with his wife, but, out of selfishness, refuses to even try. He needs some kind of epiphany or experience to wake him from his laziness.

       I love the way Carver develops the climax of the story. Because the narrator has nothing else to talk about with Robert when his wife goes to prepare for bed, he turns on the television. Feeling awkward watching TV with a blind man, he begins to describe what he is seeing. When a cathedral is displayed, the narrator is unable to describe it. Robert then has the narrator draw the cathedral with Robert’s hand on top so he can “feel” what it looks like. I don’t think that Carver picked a cathedral or that the narrator believes in nothing coincidentally. I believe that Robert is helping the narrator to experience something that is hard to describe. 

       “It was like nothing else in my life up to now.” Everyone has moments that are indescribable. For example, I can’t even begin to describe my hang-gliding experience. Flying through the air is not a natural feeling and it’s definitely something that I cannot describe; all I could say is you have to experience it to understand it. Robert surfaces this feeling in the narrator by opening up his mind and forcing him to experience. The narrator has been living his life as a spectator, seeing things around him but only what is on the surface. A blind man must teach the narrator that there is more to life than just looking. There is so much more than just what happens in front of one’s eyes. Being able to feel, to not see everything so straightforward, to open one’s mind, to experience and appreciate, creates an inner warmth that far exceeds the dry everyday life of the narrator.