My second conversation partner meeting was with CIES student Bao Han. Bao Han is 18 years old from Vietnam and has been in the US now for four months. She is here with her twin sister and says she loves having some family close because she misses her family back home dearly. She was expressing the diffuculties she faced when they first came to the US, and said it was a difficult adjustment being so far from home. However, she said now she feels more adapted to life here, having made several friends at FSU, and doesn't plan on returning home anytime soon. She was very giggly and positive about the USA, having visited California before coming to Florida and said she loved every minute of it. She visited Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Jose. She said she liked California better because there was more of a Vietnamese community there compared to Florida. She said she found it frustrating how there is so many Vietnamese restaurants in Florida, specifically Tallahasee, yet such a small Vietnamese population. It was also interesting to hear her opinion on how restaurants here make Vietnamese food different than the way they make it back in Vietnam. She said she likes the Vietnamese versions better. She said she wants to get a major in Social Work and hopefully do something in the nursing world because she wants to pursue a rewarding career helping others. She had an adorable obsession with American pop culture and talked a lot about artists such as Cardi B and Ariana Grande. I explained to her the concept of concerts and music festivals, and hope to maybe one day take her to a local concert here in Tallahassee! I really enjoyed our meeting and am looking forward to the next one.
My next tutoring session was with Turki. We met at the Starbucks on Tennessee Street, the usual spot, and started the session with a causal conversation about life and his short term English goals. Turki decided he didn't want to continue with the second session of CIES classes, and that he wanted to rather focus solely on passing the IELTS exam. He said he found the CIES classes to be helpful, but also distracting. He said he thinks he's gotten the most out of his classes and that it would be more productive for him to study on his own. Where I don't completely agree with his logic, it is his life and I trust his decision making. For this session he brought his own material that he wanted to focus on. This time it was a reading passage that I even found to be quite difficult, and I was once again impressed by his far reach in practice and ability. The reading passage was accompanied by a set of numerous comprehension questions that we reviewed and answered together. The qu...
Comments
Post a Comment