This conversation with Sulaiman was fantastic! I feel like his fluency is greatly increasing. He did not use google to translate a single time. He was able to get his point across with very little effort on my part. We began by talking about law and how he could go about studying law in the US. Then I asked him about how women just gained their right to drive in Saudi Arabia. It is very interesting to talk with him about Saudi Arabia because his stories really challenge the stereotypes we have of Arab people in the US. He was telling me that everyone was so happy that women have finally gained this right. Also, he was telling me that paid maternity leave was expected in Saudi Arabia. I told him that in the US, it is not a law to ensure paid leave for women. He was so shocked to hear this which only reinforced my changing ideas of Arabic culture. We also discussed health care and how it is so much cheaper in Saudi Arabia than here. We both realized Americans should just take vacations to Turkey or Saudi Arabia and get their teeth fixed while on vacation because it will be cheaper.
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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