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Ashley CP #1

On this past Wednesday, January 16th from 6-7 PM I had my first conversation partner meeting with CIES student Josue Ouedraogo. He is 27 years old and lived in Paris with his family. He is originally from Burkina Faso and moved to France when he was a young child. He is currently living with a host family in Tallahassee, who he has a unique connection with. The daughter of his current host family stayed with his family in Burkina Faso and he claims she is now like a sister to him. I found this super interesting that both families were able to get connected and become a big part of each others lives through their children seeking experiences beyond their country's borders. Josue has been involved in the CIES program for a semester already, but it is all in all his first time in the United States. He claims he fell in love with the idea of the US through watching different forms of American media, and wanted to experience it for himself. He is a big fan of music and listens passionately to both American music as well as French music. I took French for three semesters at FSU and learned about several French musical artists, so it was fun to bond over which artists we liked the best. After finishing out his time at CIES, he claims he wants to continue his education with a major in Civil Engineering at Florida State. However, after a year at CIES he will be returning back to Paris with his family. During our meeting, one of his friends Ali joined us who is from Kuwait. They met last semester and have become close friends and even roommates now. My favorite part of our meeting was listening to them compare their experiences in the US to their home country's and the biggest differences between the two. For Ali, he highlighted the extensive amount of freedom he feels in the US, where Josue expressed his appreciation for a lack of overt racism that he often feels affected by in parts of Paris. They both value different things in the US, but overall were nothing but positive. I look forward to our next conversation partner meeting and learning more about both of their experiences in the US.

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