Have Enough Favorites?
It’s been a few years now, but I remember the night Brian brought me Vietnamese spring rolls.
He had made spring rolls a couple weeks earlier and brought them to our English as a Second Language class. But I wasn’t there that week. With no time to make homemade rolls again the following week just for me, he bought some from a local Vietnamese restaurant.
He pulled out the takeout box for me to have.
Vietnamese food is an unknown to me. I’m not adventurous in the food department. I like what I like. I have enough favorite foods already; why would I need to try new ones?
But having a Vietnamese friend was once an unknown to me, too.
When New Is Uncomfortable
Brian isn’t his original name. It’s the name he gave himself when he came to America a few months earlier from his home in Vietnam. It’s easier to say.
When I wanted to learn how to pronounce his real name anyway, he laughed and gently told me it would be too hard. I could just call him Brian. He liked that name.
Learning new things can be uncomfortable. Meeting new people even more so. Especially when you speak different languages. It feels rude to ask someone to repeat a word over and over because you can’t understand what they’re saying. Or to be asked in return to speak slower because they’re lost.
Differences often separate us. It’s hard to jump the hurdles to find commonalities. It takes energy and motivation. And time.
To practice his English, Brian prefered real conversations with a native speaker instead of learning through a workbook. So for an hour and a half each Thursday night week after week, we simply talked.
We worked on his pronunciation skills (the th sound is hard for him) and I explained definitions of words he was unsure of (like meteorologist). But we did so through natural discussions about the differences and similarities in our two cultures of America and Vietnam. Weddings, clothing, schools, food, family, holidays, religion.
It Goes Both Ways
As I learned more about Brian’s culture, I learned more about mine, too. Sometimes I’m proud of it; sometimes I’m shamed. The Vietnamese do many things better, some things worse, just like we do.
Even though our sounds differ, our minds search for similar information, our hearts feel the same emotions, our souls want the same connections.
The teaching and learning didn’t go only one direction, but back and forth, round and round.
One word at a time, one conversation at a time, the teacher/student dynamic broke down. It grew into friend-to-friend.
Welcome Home
Despite the hindrances, it’s possible to overcome barriers and reconnect in meaningful ways.
Granted, it takes more effort to understand each other when we don’t sound the same. We have to think harder, lean in, listen closer.
Welcoming the outsider often feels awkward. But we’ve all been the stranger. We know what it means to have received hospitality as a stranger as well as to extend hospitality to the strangers around us. To help others feel at home.
Our efforts are worth it when we discover our common humanity.
I opened the takeout box to try a spring roll. It looked as foreign as it was. I timidly dipped a corner of the rice paper into the sauce. Brian urged me to dunk it more fully. I tried it.
It was good, but it tasted alien to my American tastebuds. I would need a few more bites.
When I got home, I encouraged my husband Jeff to try one, too. He did. The culture was spreading. We’d never had Vietnamese food in our mouths—in our house—and now we had both experienced it.
It was no longer an unknown.
Welcome home.
* * *
When have you been an outsider? When have you welcomed the stranger?
Please share your thoughts in the comments.
revised from the archives
