These meetings keep getting more awkward. One would think that the more people get to know each other, the more they would have to talk about. The opposite has been true for me with these conversations. The first meeting with Adil was full of few silent moments and lasted over an hour. The meeting today was full of long silences and ended after only 30 minutes when Adil said that he had to go, perhaps to escape from the awkwardness. I ended up spending most of the time talking about nonsense just to take up time and try and get conversation rolling. Adil was brief in most of his responses and brought up only a couple of topics of his own.
I have reached the conclusion that Adil and I just don’t connect on many levels and that is why our conversations lack. He seems to have an interesting life but is somewhat unwilling to share it. I try and ask him as many questions as I can think of, hoping that the answer will lead us to new topics of discussion, but Adil usually provides just enough information to answer my question. I don’t mean to talk down on Adil. It is not his fault. I imagine that he leaves each meeting thinking the same thing about me. I am going to try and come up with a few topics that I think we can express mutual interest in before our next meeting.
About the meeting itself
As I said, we did not end up talking about much, and the few things we did discuss were nothing above small talk. We discussed his role in the family company. He does most of the designing for all of the murals that his family produces. He briefly showed me the process on his iPad. It seemed like a fairly easy processes, but produced impressive results. We moved onto our favorite types of food and restaurants. He enjoys Mediterranean and Thai food. I have never had either, but he made them sound delicious. We decided to meet next week at Adil’s favorite Mediterranean resteraunt in downtown Ft. Worth. This should be fun and hopefully will allow us to spark up more conversation.
Austin,
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry you've had such a hard time with your ESL conversations...sounds very awkward and uncomfortable. I wonder if he's just a shy guy or maybe is embarassed to speak in English because he's not confident in his abilities. There's no better way to get to know people than over a good meal and Medeterranean food is amazing so I'm sure it will be a GREAT meal! If nothing else, you can always talk about the food! I hope that these conversations begin to come easier and more smoothly for you!