Thursday, June 25, 2015

TV Le CP#1

This morning (June 25) I met with my conversation partner, Karima. She is a 21 year old student from Brazil, here continuing her studies in Environmental Engineering. I picked her up from the Hecht house and drove us to the Starbucks across the street. The first notable thing that occurred was when I called her and she came to my car, she looked into the passenger seat window and requested my permission to enter the car. So polite!

We headed to the cashier to order our drinks and after some time gazing at the menu, she said she was going to order "the Brazil coffee" because she missed home. She's been here exactly one week, today. This made me laugh out loud and I asked her how she can miss home already if she's only been here a week. She explained that she missed the food and I believe her exact words were "hamburgers and pizza everywhere." I found this amusing because of how completely cliche it is that that's how she feels her first week in America.

She spoke amazing English and right when I was about to compliment her speaking skills, she apologized for how bad it was! She explained that she can understand much better than she can speak. After I assured her she spoke very well and articulate, I inquired about how she was able to learn so well. She had learned by listening to lots of American music and watching American movies. She basically taught herself this way because the English taught in schools is very bad. She went into detail about how they only teach the verb "to be."

Something else I found to be completely refreshing was that when she said anything that could be taken as a complaint, she would say, "but it's okay..." It was almost as if she was trying to not to offend me by complaining, or maybe that's just the culture in Brazil, not to complain about things too much.

I truly enjoyed my first conversation partner meeting and am very excited to continue throughout the summer!

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