Ory part 2: A little bit of awkwardness, some dance, and animal noises

After a few weeks apart, Ory and I finally met again. We celebrated this with an extremely awkward side hug which we both laughed about afterward.

I discovered three very interesting things during my second conversation with Ory.

First of all, Ory loves to dance. I would not have expected him to love dancing so much, but he said it is one of his favorite things to do. Maybe I don’t expect that out of young men here at TCU because I grew up in Texas where boys played football and would never admit to salsa dancing in their free time. But Ory was born in Guatemala and grew up in Israel, so he was exposed to all kinds of dancing, including salsa. He said that he learned how to line dance and two-step at Billy Bob’s this past weekend and loved every minute of it. He is beginning to get into country music after watching Blake Shelton on “The Voice.” I’ve lived in Texas my entire life and still have no idea how to line dance, so his passion for dancing really made me feel bad about my complete lack of coordination.

Secondly, Ory made a very interesting point about international and American students. He asked me if I had any other friends who were international students. Reluctantly, I admitted that I don’t. He pointed out that the international students always seem to befriend other international students, while Americans have almost all American friends. We couldn’t figure out why that was. Maybe it’s the cultural/language barrier. All I know is that I would love to be friends with more international students because I get to learn about other places and virtually travel for free through their words and images.

And finally, and most importantly, I discovered that animal noises are interpreted differently around the world. This makes sense I suppose since there are different languages and sounds are interpreted differently. However, I had always just assumed a cat meows, a cow moos and a chicken bocks and clucks. This discussion was brought about after I showed Ory a funny video I had seen recently. It is a music video created by two Swedish men titled “What does the Fox Say?” It really did make us wonder what the fox says. Ory told me it was funny because the animal noises were all different in his country. For example, a sound to represent the chicken wouldn’t be bock or cluck, but somewhere along the lines of quirri quirri. I don’t think that is the official spelling.

                I really am glad I have the opportunity to converse with Ory. We are learning a lot from one another and about one another, and introducing each other to different kinds of humor. I told him to watch the movie Christmas Vacation and he made me promise to watch the MTV show “Ridiculousness.” Although I feel like we have learned so much about each other, I think we have more to talk about and I look forward to our future meetings.