An Eternal Blind Date

Yesterday I made my first “real” friends at the University. It went something like this: I got to the University of Jordan campus with one goal: find a friend who will speak to me in Arabic. This is more difficult than it might seem because so many people here, especially at the university, speak English way better than I speak Arabic. After wandering around by myself for about 15 minutes, “exploring” the campus and asking about 8 different people where the language center was (even though I already knew—I was just trying to use my Arabic!), I realized this was not working.

I needed an extended conversation, but how do I go about speaking to people in Arabic? Just sit down in the middle of a group of giggling girls, tell them that I am a new student and I don’t have any friends, and I need to speak in Arabic? Will you please be my friend?

Awkward.

However, I realized that I could “make up” a story about having to do an assignment for my class (although it is technically true). I could walk up to people, tell them I was a new student from America studying Arabic (all in Arabic, of course), and for my assignment I was supposed to speak with people about their families and their studies in Arabic (both safe topics, considering the Arabic vocabulary words that I know!).

The problem? It is a lot more awkward than you might expect to just walk up to people (especially since Arab girls are more often than not in groups and rarely by themselves) and ask them to talk to you. Again, I realized that this was great practice for my mission, and somehow that made it easier.

After walking around for a couple of minutes, looking for my first victim, I saw a female student sitting by herself on a bench near the main gate.

Just sitting.

Not studying, not talking to friends, not even eating. I was as though she knew that I was coming. I saw my chance and took it, walked over to her, sat down, said my “Arabic line,” and asked her if she would talk to me for a minute or two about her studies. I was expecting ten, maybe fifteen minutes, and then I would use the line on someone else.

I was not expecting six hours, which is what I got!

She immediately started speaking in fast Jordanian colloquial Arabic (which is still unfamiliar territory for me—more on that later), telling me that she was studying English (but her English is not very great—which is excellent for me!) and she would love to talk to me in Arabic. We “talked” for about an hour (well, at least I tried—it is hard to keep up with my limited vocabulary!) and she bought me lunch, which was very nice of her.

Then she had to run off to a lecture and I had to take a test, but we exchanged numbers and met up after my test, and this time her sister was with her. Her sister is a master’s student in English teaching, which is somewhat detrimental to my Arabic ability, but when she spoke to me in Arabic she spoke in fully vowelled, beautiful Fusha (the formal Arabic language—“normal” people don’t speak it, but I am learning both Fusha and colloquial so it is helpful).

We talked about everything under the sun—literally!—and the took me to dinner.

This is where the eternal blind date comes in.

As I was sitting there eating dinner, I started thinking about what an awkward situation I was in. Half the time I didn’t fully understand what they were saying, which made communication even more awkward than it is on blind dates with strange men.

Some of the issues: should I pay for myself? Should I offer to pay? Would they be offended if I offered to pay? (They come from a very rich and well established family.) I got my wallet out of my backpack when we got to the restaurant, and they made fun of me as if they thought I thought someone would steal it. So I guess that was a tip-off that they didn’t want me to pay (I didn’t offer, by the way—I thought it would be best that way).

Another problem that I ran into was knowing how much to express my opinion and how much I should pretend like I think the other person was right (see the blind date resemblance? I thought of a certain experience in the Bookstore at this point…). Because there was also a language barrier, half of the time when they asked for my opinion about something I just validated their point.

Another opinion that became a problem included wondering what I should say when they asked me where I wanted to sit in the restaurant. Should I express my opinion that I wanted to sit by the window? What if they didn’t want to sit by the window? If I don’t care where we sit, would they think that I just don’t ever have an opinion? How much should I laugh at their jokes? And how much should I talk in my broken Arabic as opposed to just listening, nodding, and smiling, pretending I understood? Were they secretly laughing at my accent? Could they even understand what I said? Do I pretend that I don’t know what is good because I don’t know how much they want to pay and ask them instead? How fast should I eat? Should I take on their Arab friendship ways (including touching the other person a lot, perhaps in case they try to run away or something) or should I be my American self? How much should I truly tell them about my life, and how much should I make up to make myself look presentable to girls from a rich Arab family?

And we were together for six hours yesterday!

Really, I thought it was fun and I am excited to talk to them every day. I couldn’t help but see the similarities, though, between making Arab friends and going on blind dates!