On February 27th I met with Bao Han in the CIES computer room. It was also a conversational tutoring session, as I met with both Ngoc and Bao. We were together for a couple of hours talking about Vietnamese/Thai customs, religion/spirituality, geography, and where we hope to travel in the future. They were open to talking about their religious view and told me that they believe in some type of higher power but that they are not religious. We all got to talk to another CIES student from Saudi Arabia, who shared with us his Muslim beliefs, and what spirituality meant to him. It was eye opening hearing about how integral religion is to his daily life and his identity. I got to also hear her opinions and uncertainty on the matter of God or religion and encouraged her to express herself and use a wider range of vocabulary. As she gave her opinions on these matters I worked at correcting her grammar mistakes and helping her sound out words she had troubles pronouncing, such as the b and p sounds, the th sound, and the sh sound.
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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