The passion of talking story

The passion of talking story

I found it interesting that Americans are keen on telling stories to foreigners(I don’t know that whether it is the same to treat the Americans themselves). And they are friendly to foreigners,  too.

Yesterday when I went into the restroom, a plumber was repairing the tap. He was working seriously and didn’t notice me. I came up and asked him how serious the tap was. He stopped and said lots of terminology of the work he done and I could hardly to catch up with him and just nodded, said “wow, it is cool!”

At that time, he seemed to fall in his world of job, which he has done for 15 years. When I was ready to go back to my room, he asked me some questions about our summer programs. I answered with short words, because I could not say something more by my poor English. I only could use simple words to describe my feeling about the first trip to America, such as “great”,”cool”,”funny”,”enjoy”and etc. And then, he began to talk about his family. “I have a Japanese wife, a children at 29 years old. My wife often makes sushi at home and I like it so much！Do you think so? Have you ever ate the sushi? If you have not, I would like to invite you to my home to eat dinner!” “Oh, I ate it, I like it so much, too.” I didn’t know how to response his invitation, so I just escape this topic. “I feel proud of my son. He work as a sell man and make 10 thousand dollars per year. He graduated from Miami University, and his major is healthy care. And after graduating, he wanted to do something he like and lucky enough, he found his talent in selling cars. So he did it, and succeeded!” From the his face, I can see the pride in his son and the love to his family. He wanted to share his happiness to me.

At that time, I can not only experience how friendly he is, but also see the quality of equality in his life. In America, people are willing to share his/her happiness to others and others can feel happy and positive. Maybe it is different from China. In China, people don’t like to show their achievement to others because it is easy to arise the envy and jealousy.

And now, I have a question! How to talk with the friendly Americans?