Today I met with 3 of the 7. This morning (it was actually at noon, which is considered morning here in Spain) I went to a coffee shop with two other foreigners, one from Morocco, the equivalent distance of Iowa from Minnesota, and one from Vietnam, the complete other side of the world. These two girls are cultural, funny, friendly, and much like myself, so we vibe well. We mostly spoke Spanish, and since Spanish wasn't the first language for any of us, my Spanish rolled off my tongue easily and confidently. We all have a shared love for Korean dramas, bubble tea, Spain, and languages, so we easily passed two hours talking and bonding. Overall it was a great interaction, and I walked away feeling satisfied in my language and relational abilities.
In the early afternoon (4:30 PM), I got churros with an intercambio from Granada. This one started out, from my eyes, a little rough. For whatever reason, the 2.5-hour gap between my intercambios, caused my Spanish to take a drastic tumble. As a Granadina, my intercambio has a strong accent, and this automatically made me intimidated, causing my words and sentences to come out unsure and choppy. She's also a very straightforward Spanish college student, and although I appreciate Spanish culture deeply and feel very Spanish myself, the truth is I have such a mixed culture and don't usually relate as well with one-cultured, non-traveled people.
We talked about a plethora of things, but even when we switched to English, my confidence was still low. I felt like I was failing, like I wasn't asking her good enough questions, wasn't relating well enough to her, or wasn't growing a friendship.
I've been learning it takes a lot of humility to learn a language and build relationships cross-culturally, but that doesn't help those moments when I feel unsatisfied and unproductive. The goal of making friends seems so simple, but I still feel like it's too hard.
Then something changed in my thought process. After we went our separate ways, my Granadina intercambio randomly messaged me about the book she mentioned to me and said I could borrow it if I wanted. I then sent her a picture of our Christmas tree that I told her about, and we briefly chatted over text message.
Tonight I realized something simple but profound. It's hard to "fail" at friendship.
