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How to make friends

Kathy Tran with Ali Noorani

Friendships are an important part of life. They can help you integrate into the USA.

It is very true that a friend in need is a friend indeed. No matter how caring and loving your parents are and how friendly your brothers and sisters are, we always want to have someone on top of all others and yes, it’s a friend. Do you need to know how to make friends in the USA?

With a true friend, you never need to search for a topic for conversation. Everything is ok with a friend. You will not talk with him for a week for no reason and when it’s over you need two weeks to finish your talks. You will never remember what your friend did to you and you stopped talking to him before. You spend many nights crying with your friend because your boyfriend left you and you cannot go to your mum, dad, brother or sister and tell them that you are having bad days. You simply can say sorry for making him feel bad yesterday.

True friends are always difficult to find and once you have, it’s hard to leave them.

I had many good friends with whom I spent almost twenty years in the refugee camp. They are all in my memories and sometimes I talk to some of them. I try to talk to them like we used to do before but nothing comes to mind. I have to try very hard to laugh loud because now I need a reason to laugh. I try to hang on the phone for long but I can’t. The words are finished soon. Now I need a topic for conversation, a reason to laugh, I have my own difficulties, responsibilities and my friends have their own. We have a different situation now. Much different than what we used to have.

Everything got changed with time and situation. I had never thought that I would make friends in the United States. I was very scared to talk to people at first. I never talked to anybody at work. I had a fear. Fear of my language. My way of life, my race, my religion, my understanding etc. I talked very low, tried to be very honest. I just used to reply back if I was asked anything. But with the passage of time, it got changed.

One day somebody came to me and said: “Hi little one how are you.” I didn’t say anything more than I was good. He was training me that day. He sat beside me and started teaching me all the possible way he could.

He gave me a piece of gum. I didn’t accept. Because I had heard that people in the United States don’t eat anything from anyone.

He didn’t say anything to me. I found easier to learn with him than that of the day before. I was trained by a lady on the first.

I was always taught by a male teacher since my childhood. So might be the reason it was easier to get trained by him than by her. Or one was nicer than the other. Whatever the reason could be but I was able to make a good friend. He took care of me during my first month of the training period. We had a huge age gap, language barrier, different situation, different family background, different religion, different culture, a different way of understanding, he was a man, and I’m a woman. And yet we were best friends. And still, we are, even though I left that company.

I proved myself wrong. A relationship, especially friendship, doesn’t need a perfect language.

There is nothing do with your race, religion, age, culture. The only thing we need is acceptance. We need to accept that whoever is and where ever they are from treating them equally. I have stopped expecting a Nepali friend at work especially. It’s not only Americans should treat you good because you are having trouble in understanding America. You too need to be good enough to accept that they too are having a trouble understanding you. It is true that everyone we meet is good enough to make a friend.

Different people have a different attitude.

One can decide who could be the friend within a few hours of working together. My mum calls me and asks first about my daughter then about my husband and then me. My dad does the same. But whenever my friend calls me his starting will be always with “hi my friend how are you’. This is the reason why I told you before. We already have everybody but still, we look for somebody i.e. a friend. And I recently started working in a new place.

To tell you the truth, there is somebody who always gives me a tight hug saying how you are and tells me if my eyeliner is dropping down. There is someone who wants to talk to me because he/she like my face. And also there is someone who looks at me like a tiger is looking at a goat. But now I have come across and can strongly decide who the best person to be a friend is.

Las opiniones expresadas y los consejos dados en los blogs de USA Hello Voices y Hello son propios de los escritores. USAHelloofrece información imparcial y cursos en línea para ayudar a los recién llegados a los EE. UU.