On Monday, I met with one of my conversation partners named Eun-young at Atomic Coffee. This was her second session at CIES so she's already had some experience with a conversation partner which saved us from a lot of the awkward nervousness that I heard some of my classmates talk about. We mostly talked about the differences between Seoul and Tallahassee and it was quickly revealed that she isn't too impressed with this tiny capitol city compared to her hometown capitol. So now I am determined to show her all of the fun things that Tally has to offer!
I was really impressed with how well she was able to converse with me, especially after discovering she has only been speaking English for 4 months. As I mentioned in class, I tend to speak very fast (thanks a lot, mom) so I had to keep reminding myself to speak slower. And besides one or two misunderstandings due to pronunciation, it seems as if she's picking up on English with relative ease.
On Tuesday at tea time, I met my other two conversation partners, Hasan and Abdulrahman. Abdulrahman just arrived in the states 2 weeks ago and I could tell he wasn't very confident in his English (or maybe he's just shy?) and he remained pretty quiet during our conversation unless I directly addressed him. I had to repeat myself a few times because again, I was talking at 1,000mph but I think with some one-on-one time, he'll improve pretty quickly. Now Hasan on the other hand, had me cracking up the whole time. I can tell this one is going to be a handful. He was making fun of how we don't emphasize the 't' in 'water' and it sounds more like we're saying 'wadder':
Hasan: Why is that? Why do you say it like 'wadder'??
Me: ...good question. I guess most people just don't enunciate the 't'.
Hasan: Nobody knows what I'm talking about when I ask for some 'waTer'! I have to keep saying it over and over; 'water! water! waTer!' (as he's saying this, he's making gestures and tilting an invisible cup to his mouth)
My next plans are to go for a walk around campus with Eun-Young and watch/play soccer with Hasan and Abdulrahman so they can show me the ways. They were appalled when I didn't know who the Argentinian soccer player Maduro was. I'm excited to meet back up with each of them!
I that I signed up to tutor Eun-Young (I'm going to meet with her later today) so I'm glad to hear that her spoken English is rather good. Hopefully this will mean that I can explain grammar and such to her with with greater ease. I'm excited to meet her!
ReplyDeleteHasan sounds hilarious. My conversation partners were quite humorous as well, which was sort of surprising to me because if I was in there situation I would probably be worrying about trying to speak properly so much that I would have a hard time making a joke.
Hhahaha! Diego Maradona, aka the best futbol player ever ;) Here are some highlights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hHhaHSaTlQ
ReplyDeleteThere are no words to describe how epic this game was and is to soccer fans around the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yHyYmvvVvg
ReplyDeleteVery political as as well!