On January 22 I met Yi Luo outside of Strozier. Yi is a graduate student studying statistics. She is very fluent in speaking English but would like more experience speaking with people in English because most of her friends only speak Chinese with her. She mentioned that she struggles with confidently speaking with some of her students and professors. I could tell that she prefers to speak slowly and perfect rather than quick and with a few mistakes. I told her that the most important this is communication. And no one expects for anyone to speak perfectly. She saw the prompts for the conversation partners and thought they weren't very natural -which I agreed- and we decided to talk about our own ideas. We talked about a large variety of things from being introverts to her hometown to our favorite foods. I really enjoyed talking with Yi. We decided that for our next conversation we would meet at her favorite Chinese restaurant in town. This conversation was very meaningful to me because it taught me that even advanced English language learners need assistance with advancing. I am excited to meet with Yi some more and to have more conversations with her.
My third conversation partner meeting was with Josue, my conversation partner from Paris, France. He suggested that we go to a restaurant for this meeting, and recommended the Colombian restaurant on Tennessee St. called "Super Perros". I had never been to this restaurant before, so it was interesting to not only converse with someone from outside of my culture but also at a cultural restaurant with an atmosphere and menu different than what I am used to. Most of the menu was in Spanish, so we were able to bond over trying to figure out what the menu was saying, and ended up sharing a lot of laughs over it. During our meeting, we caught up on how he was doing at CIES, what he's involved in in Tallahasee, and discussed deeper topics such as the current political affairs going on in France. This led to a grander discussion about American politics, and it turned out we had similar views. It was interesting to connect our ideas across border lines, realizing we all want the ...
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