This weekend I not only met with my conversation partner, but also met with another CIES student from China, Minjie. She and I talked for hours about her life in China, her job with little kindergarteners in Shanghai, her 7 year long distance relationship with her now husband, her parents and their prejudice towards her husband due to the fact that he is from Hong Kong, her wedding and their future plans as a couple!! I was so ecstatic to learn this much about the Chinese culture through her and all her stories, she had so much to share about her life and her opinions about Chinese and American culture. Towards the end of the night, she even let my try on two of her traditional Chinese dress wear from the Qing and Zhang dynasty, it was such an honoring and amazing experience!!! I learned so much about Chinese culture and am really motivated to learn Mandarin and visit China while I am abroad:)
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...
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