This tutoring session was again at The Sweet Shop, making up for the lost tutoring time we spent chatting about the struggles of life abroad. Today Turki was more focused, not being affected by the emotional turmoil he was dealing with last time, and we were able to get right to it. He brought in a reading exercise that he found online from some kind of IELTS practice exam that was specifically targeting comprehension questions. Most of the questions we worked on were True/False questions based off of a three-page passage. I found these questions to be very tricky for someone who doesn't have a vast English vocabulary. A lot of the questions were formed using synonyms for sentences in the passage, and unless the reader knew such multiple words representing the same meaning, they wouldn't be able to successfully complete the exercise. Turki asked how he could prepare for such questions, and I told him multiple times to read and gain as much new vocabulary as he can. He learned the words creature and submersible; trying to explain the word creature was quite humorous I must admit. Overall it was a successful session and I think he is going to make more of an effort to read more and learn new vocabulary words thanks to it.
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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