By Sarah Elbeshbishi

Grab a cup of coffee and travel the world in an hour — well sort of. 

Students, faculty and general members of the community can spend an hour and a half every week engaging in conversations in languages other than English during Coffee Conversations. 

Coffee Conversations is a weekly event hosted by the University of Maryland’s Language House where members of the house set up a table where they can engage in conversations with others who speak the same language during the event. 

“Having the Language House coffee chats open to the whole university community — and people from outside can come as well … [is] just a great opportunity for people to not only practice their target language but obviously be exposed a little bit,” Douglas Gylnn, the director of the Language House Immersion Program, said.

The purpose of the event is to provide people the opportunity to practice, improve or maintain their language skills in an informal setting, according to the school of language, literature and culture website. The conversations are usually facilitated by students from the Language House to guide the conversation if necessary.   

Students who live in the Language House live in “clusters” based on the language program they are in, where they are required to speak only that language as a way to fully immerse themselves. 

The clusters as well as the languages at Coffee Conversations are French, Arabic, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Hewbrew, Persian, Japanese and German. However, this semester there is not a Persian option due to not having enough students for a Perisan cluster.

Many students that are not a part of the Language House but are learning the language come to the event to simply improve like freshman Andrew Tolarski. 

“I can’t keep up with anyone in there but it’s really great to be listening to them because I’m starting to understand,” Tolarski said.

Despite not being at the same level as the other Italian speakers that usually attend, the vocal performance and music education double major “can listen in on conversations and start to understand.’ According to Tolarski, “it’s different being in a classroom, when you have a professor speaking at you. Here they’re speaking with you.” 

To students of the Language House, Coffee Conversations is “just kind of an extension of the Language House.” According to senior french major Dante Betancourt, “in the clusters you see the same people all the time but then there are other people out there that can speak the target language or are trying to speak the target language that come in.”

Coffee Conversations is a weekly event, taking place every Monday from 4 pm to 5:30 pm for the past several years. “[This event is] kind of one of those activities that has been institutionalized here at the Language House,” Gylnn said. 

The Language House also provides coffee, tea and a snack from a different place of the world known as the “progressive snack” as a part of the weekly cultural spotlight, something Glynn has implemented as the new director. 

The progressive snack provides the opportunity for people to try different dishes from other countries and cultures, Glynn said. “It’s kind of a way of extending that cultural exposure to people who come and obviously it’s a way of being hospitable.”