Jules CP-3

After juggling around our schedules, Stéphane and I were able to have our first conversation meeting last night around 10 p.m. We had originally planned on grabbing dinner after TEFL class, but he forgot that he had plans and instead suggested we go to Café Shisha for hookah. I don't usually smoke but it seemed like a nice late-night meeting spot, and apparently it's a favorite among the CIES students. It turned out that the venue provided a comfortable, relaxed atmosphere that lent itself well to open discussion of several topics.

Conversation was a little bit awkward at first, however, with me asking a bunch of the normal "small-talk" questions and him providing succinct responses. He confessed that he is pretty shy, but after the hot tea and hookah arrived he seemed to loosen up a bit. It was also helpful for us to transition back and forth between English and French-- as rusty as my language skills are, he really appreciated that I was putting forth the effort to make him comfortable.

Stéphane is a native of Côte d'Ivoire and has been in the States since December. I found out later in the conversation that he left the country right after the incumbent president was voted out but refused to leave his post, inciting violence against those who were loyal to the legitimately elected leader. On his first attempt to leave the country the airport was shut down, so he is very lucky to have made it over here. Apparently everything has calmed down since he left, but he is not sure whether he wants to return home immediately after passing the TOEFL exam.

We had a fun time looking through his photos of his last days back home, and he mentioned that some Americans found it surprising to see what a nice house he had-- "We don't all live in huts, you know?". He is interested in integrating himself more into American culture, and so I think I'll invite him to the next kickball game my group of friends has organized. We'll try to get him over his shyness. Actually, by the end of the night Stéphane had already made a new friend-- Abraham, the owner of Café Shisha. Apparently Abraham had overheard us talking in French and explained that he is from Morocco (another Francophone country). We ended up talking with him for several minutes. All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable first meeting, and I look forward to exposing Stéphane to real-life American culture.