I met with Dojun for our weekly Skype session on Monday,
February 11th. We talked about the Lunar New Year, which was last
week. We did not have a tutoring session since last week because of Lunar New
Year since he went to visit his family in Busan, which is his hometown. He taught
me more about what Lunar New Year is and he explained some common traditions
and ceremonies for ancestors. According
to Dojun, people get about five days off from work and school. I asked him if there are any well known
parades or marches like the United States has for Thanksgiving, but he said
there are not any. We then talked about transportation and I had
him explain different types of transportation and compare the times it would
take to get from one place to another using each method of transportation from
Busan to Seoul. I learned that it takes about five hours by car without
traffic, three hours by a fast train, and only about one hour by a plane. Dojun needed help explaining things in the
past using the expression, “used to be”. I told him how he would be able to use
that in a sentence, and he then asked me if he needed to include a specific
amount of time. I told him that he does
not have to, especially if it is already understood through context, but it is
useful. He then shared that he needs more
practice in his listening and speaking skills, so I suggested watching some
movies, documentaries, or TED Talks.
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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