I met with Ngoc in the CIES computer lab and we had a conversational tutoring session where we discussed different superstitions and religious beliefs of Vietnam, Thailand, the Middle East, U.S., etc. She was explaining to me a custom that is popular in Thailand and has bled over to Vietnam as well. This custom is unlike I've ever heard of before and I was quite confused by it when she began to explain it. We problem-solved together and I helped her with her pronunciation and vocabulary and corrected any grammar errors while she spoke. After a few times of her explaining the custom to me in different ways, we finally reached a consensus. There are these dolls that people put their dead children's soul's into, so to speak, and the people believe that the soul of the child lives within the doll and that by having this doll you will gain prosperity and good fortune. She explained to me that people will buy food and drinks for the doll, feed it and buy it nice things so that it may bring them good tidings.
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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