First Meeting with Aitana!

I finally had my first meeting with my conversation partner, Aitana. She hails from Madrid, Spain. She’s only been to the US once very briefly before deciding to study here. And she’s only 18 years old. Moving away to college was hard enough when I was 18 but relocating to a whole new country would have been overwhelming, especially if I didn’t know the language. Aitana hadn’t started learning English until she came to TCU.

Finding each other to actually meet up was a struggle. We decided to meet in Union Grounds but I didn’t even think about asking her what she looked like. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if she was a man or a woman. It probably would have been smart to ask in advance. So I just sat in Union Grounds for a while and tried to look for someone that may have also been looking for someone. Coincidentally my friend Maggie was also in Union. She happens to be a Spanish major so when Aitana and I finally found each other, Maggie helped with the conversation a little. I don’t know if that’s cheating or not but I think it made Aitana feel a little more comfortable. It helped keep the conversation from being uninteresting or awkward. Maggie could easily help Aitana understand what I was saying and vice versa by translating bits and pieces.

Some things just don’t really translate though. Aitana had never heard of fraternities or sororities. I’m almost positive Greek life is exclusive to American culture. At any other university around the world, students would probably think frat/srat life was insane and ridiculous. Maggie and I tried to explain the recruitment process to her but I’m pretty sure it went right over her head.

Don’t think that Maggie was there for the entire hour. She left after about fifteen minutes and then Aitana and I continued on just fine. We talked about some differences between American and Spanish culture, namely what it’s like to go out in Madrid as opposed to here. She said that we all go out at night on the weekends really early. I mean my friends and I don’t go out until like 10:45 but apparently that’s not late enough. Aitana said that they wouldn’t go out until maybe one o’clock in the morning. And then rather than coming back by maybe 3 am like we do here, her friends will stay out until 7 am and then go have breakfast together. So they wouldn’t even get to bed until maybe 8 in the morning! I don’t know how I would feel about that! I think I would waste the whole day sleeping rather than being productive and doing something with my life.

Another interesting thing that I discovered during our conversation was the fact that mainly American movies and TV shows are shown in Spain. Aitana said that only older people watch actual Spanish television shows. I asked her what shows that she watched and Lizzie McGuire and Friends were the two that came up. She also said that they would just have Spanish voiceovers with the normal American actors. She thought it was funny how the voices and the actors were mismatched.

I’m a little nervous for the next conversation. I sort of ran out of things to talk about and questions to ask. Hopefully I can come up with some stimulating topics before our next meeting.

JOKES AND CARTOONS, YO.

What do you call 100 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?

A horrible boating accident.

A dog walks into a bar and is promptly escorted out, as animals are not allowed.

What do you get when you cross a Mexican with an octopus?

Nothing, two different species cannot propagate and gene splicing isn’t advanced enough to separate the specific traits of an organism.

There’s an Irishman, a homosexual, and a Jew standing at a bar. What a fine example of an integrated community.

Why did Suzie fall off the swing?

Because she had no arms.

What’s green and has wheels?

Grass. I lied about the wheels.

How do you confuse a blonde?

Paint yourself green and throw forks at her.

Why was little Jimmy sad?

He had a frog stapled to his face.

Laughter as Relief

Over the summer, two of my oldest friends and I all got marketing internships for Sport Clips. We all had an “in” with the regional developer and easily got positions. And this was a pretty unusual internship because we were paid. Not just hourly either; on top of that we were compensated for driving. That’s pretty much unheard of for an internship.

I must say we earned every penny of our paychecks. Every week we were assigned four stores in the area to market. And by market I mean handing out coupons. Eight thousand per store to be exact. We would scour the shopping centers and strip malls surrounding each store, giving each business coupons for their employees and customers. It may sound easy but it can be extremely frustrating and tiring. Especially in the hundred degree heat. Thanks Texas.

Driving around North Texas with my friends for an entire summer, armed with coupons and deprived of air conditioning and water, does something to a person. Emotions run high whenever it reaches four o’clock and you still have over three thousand coupons to give out and there are no more stores in sight. I mean my friends and I were strange to begin with (which probably doesn’t help when you’re trying to encourage total strangers to come get their haircut at Sport Clips) but by the end of each day, we would reach a whole new level of eccentricity.

One extremely warm day in June, we happened to find ourselves in Fort Worth marketing the Sport Clips on University Drive. By then we had already marketed around ten stores, so this whole ordeal was getting a little old. It was also our second day for the store because we could not finish for the life of us the day before. Procrastination kicked in and instead of starting immediately upon arrival we decided to sit in the car and watch YouTube videos, obviously much more appealing than walking around in the hot sun.

I parked my car outside a Great Outdoors and Meagan pulled up one of the weirdest videos I have ever watched. It was actually from the Sunny Heights High series that was brought up during the Australian humor presentation. In this particular video, the oddball theatre teacher proceeds to perform an interpretive dance for his students. Literally, this dance goes on for at least five minutes. My friends and I erupted into a giant fit of laughter. I’m sure that if anyone walked by they would have been extremely concerned for our well-being. It took us a good ten minutes to calm down and pull ourselves together.

However, once we entered the Great Outdoors in order to give them coupons, our laughter returned. Somehow we successfully (well relatively successful) gave away some coupons, which were most likely never used because we laughed during the entire exchange. Once we got out of that restaurant, the laughter continued for who knows how much longer, prompting us to take a very extended lunch break after only working for about 10 minutes.

Now that I’ve been introduced to the theories related to humor, I see now that our fit of laughter was probably related to the Relief Theory. Frustration, exhaustion, and overheating caused us to build up stress, only to be relieved by ridiculous bouts of laughter. It probably did help in our marketing abilities but it definitely helped us keep our sanity.