On January 18, 2019 I Skyped my conversation partner from my room for 2 hours, 15 minutes, and 26 seconds from 8:00 pm till 10:16 pm. I asked DJ a variety of questions ranging from politics and economics to social media and Christmas. In Seoul, it snows from December to February. People typically work Monday through Friday from 9-6, with a one hour lunch break in between. For greetings, people usually ask if you have eaten a meal. This is important to the people of South Korea because South Korea used to be a poor nation, so this greeting has been alive for quite some time. Since it is more conservative, people don't hug or kiss each other on the cheek, especially if they are men. Sometimes some girls and women might greet each other with a hug if they are excited to see each other, but it is usually not the case. Christianity is the most common religion, followed by Buddhism. Christmas is a public holiday and most young people consider it romantic. DJ went with this wife to a fancy restaurant for Christmas. The younger generation, according to DJ, seem to have more of a distrust with politicians, so they don't see the point in voting, meaning less people are voting. People think that the politicians just want to do things that benefit them, not the people, and thus the political parties aren't viewed as too different. Most people have the goal of buying their own house, but housing prices are increasing every year. To stabilize the prices, the government is trying to increase taxes. DJ told me that health insurance is both a duty and a right, and that insurance prices are reasonable. We talked a little bit about social media but he couldn't tell me too much about his opinion on it since he doesn't use it that often. He does have Cacaotalk, which he tells me is the most common messaging app in South Korea. With this app, you can also send someone a coupon, so if you send your friend a coupon on their birthday for a restaurant, they can go there using the coupon. Towards the end I asked DJ why he thinks his English is not good and he told me he sometimes doesn't know certain vocabulary for some topics. I asked him what he would like for us to talk about and he said he wants to practice more casual conversations, so I taught him a popular slang phrase at the moment called "I'm shook", used it in a sentence and explained in what context to use it in. I challenged him to say it this week whenever he is feeling shook so that he can manipulate the phrase and be able to add it to his everyday English lexicon. For our next session, I am going to go over more common phrases and slang terms. We are actually going to talk tomorrow morning instead of Friday night because he is going on vacation. I really enjoy talking to DJ and can't wait for him to start using these common phrases in his life.
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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