Meetings

One of the people that we met on our vacation is a young woman that I've known through Conversation Exchange for about a year.  She and I have never actually spoken together prior to this; for familial reasons, she won't let herself be heard speaking in English to a guy.  Skype-text only. This lead to her thinking that her English was pretty bad, when in fact it's pretty good.  I've noticed this in several French people. Because the standards of French schools regarding excellence in language are so high, they tend to think that they are poor communicators in English.  In fact, some are, but most of them do quite well.  Tough to convince them of that because, of course, one of the things that you say to someone you like (or just that you want to be polite to) is no, actually, your English is quite good, even if you're thinking I wonder what it is that they just said?

But this woman is, in fact, good; she rarely hesitated, and she almost never used the wrong word.  Most of our conversation was in English, because my wife was there (there's my excuse) and because it's tough for me to understand quickly spoken French (there's the actual reason).  We talked, probably, for about three hours over the course of two days, and it was completely delightful.  Much better than Skype-texting! For one thing, verbal communication lets her native intelligence shine through, in a way that texting just can't do.  For another -- well, sometimes it's just nice to sit in the sun and have a leisurely chat with a friend.  I was going to say 'a new friend', but that's not true -- as I say, I've known her for about a year.  But in a way, sitting there in the sunlight - it was.  I liked it.

It's a little odd that we've become friends, as we have very little in common - but one thing that we do have is that our attitudes towards ourselves and towards other people are very similar.  We find it hard to form deep friendships; we don't think that we're as good as we ought to be (though in different areas), and we like to be alone.  Pretty much sounds like a description of people who would not get along, but we do.  Sometimes we talk about her life (she's got to endure some problems that aren't her fault) or schooling (she was just accepted into a prestigious legal education program, though she scoffs and says oh, it was just by accident), while sometimes we talk about mine.  Curiously, I find her life interesting and mine boring, while she feels the reverse.  Each of us can't understand why the other is interested!

It was pretty cool. I wish that it had lasted longer.