CP #3

I met with Minseo for our first one-on-one session together on 1/21/13 at Tom Brown Park.  At first we talked about how she was and exchanged general pleasantries, but then we got into a real discussion about personal life affairs.  She has an older brother that is trying to get her parents to pay for him to go to an art school, except they aren’t very enthusiastic about it because he’s gone to a few other schools and dropped out of all of them.  She said this with a lot of eye rolling, which I am sure is her mocking her brother’s work ethic and also condoning her parents attitude toward it.  I explained to her that my parents are the same way.  I come from a family that places a lot of value on getting stuff done, which is why I have my BEAUTIFUL Volvo (she laughed here) since my senior year of high school and am able to go to school at FSU.  I knew that Asians tend to get the unfair stereotype of being obsessed with working, but when I actually compared what she was saying with my life I realized that we actually have a lot of similarities between the both of us, especially when it came to recognizing how our families view and treat a little effort and some work.  While there were other things we talked about that I am pretty uncomfortable disclosing, it was an interesting conversation because I learned a lot about the unspoken rules of Korean culture, like getting a divorce.  Minseo was telling me that getting a divorce isn’t illegal, but it is incredibly difficult to get remarried in Korea once being divorced as it still has a negative taboo attached onto the act and the person.  I told her that I was raised Catholic and some of the same rules apply to those kinds of families as they do to Korean families, so I understood some of her hesitations with divorced groups.  I tried to give her some “you go, girl” tips because I became hyper aware of how often she gets to talk to people about personal problems (especially since she told me that her Korean family and friends might not understand the things that she has done) and I wanted to encourage her to feel like she could talk to me because that’s what I really want!  We sat at Tom Brown for about an hour and then drove over to Atomic Coffee where we sat for about another hour.   I asked her if Korea had more tea shops than coffee shops and she said that they had coffee shops, but there could be about five or seven on the same street instead of how spread out they are in Tallahassee.  She was also very interested in the TEFL class and told me that she was looking into maybe taking it so that she could teach kids English (maybe in Korea, but she also said that she really wouldn’t mind travelling), which I thought was so wonderful.  I showed her my TEFL book, which she was really excited to go through.  She asked me how I liked the class I told her I thought that it was interesting because it even affects the way I think about how I learn, but more importantly, it teaches me to be sensitive to all the different modes of education out there.  Minseo is easily able to communicate her thoughts and when she does get caught up on one word, she is pretty good at coming up with a synonym that fits just fine.  I love talking to her because we get caught up in conversation so easily, but I am pretty sure that is because we have somewhat similar personalities, which is an amazing thing to realize in another human being.