Sarah_CP_#1

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Date/Time: 10/28 at 6:30 P.M.

Location: Starbucks

Topic discussed: Getting to know the basics

Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: Weather, family dynamics, restaurants, cars, basic Arabic words, "closer" versus "farther" in English.

 


Luckily, my first acquaintance with Soud was made during a classroom observation. A large grin on his face and his hand outstretched towards me, he motionedfor me to look at his iPhone screen. Excitedly, he showed me the email notice he’d received that named me as his Conversation Partner. From the outset I was excited to get to know Soud because of his overall jovial nature. Through Emoji-heavy text messages, we arranged to meet up at the CIES building and walk to the new Starbucks across the street together. At Starbucks, he insisted on covering both of our beverages and asked me if I preferred to sit inside out outside (chivalry lives!). I learned that he has not seen the FSU campus outside of the CIES building, and I vowed to make that happen. We decided that he wants to see everywhere except for Strozier Library, because he does not enjoy reading very much. He taught me the Arabic word for library, and it became a running joke. We compared his native Kuwait to Tallahassee in terms of weather (Celsius measurements are confusing), compared family sizes, car types, and favorite colors (his is blue because of Kuwait’s soccer team, and mine is green just because). Upon sharing with him the few Arabic phrases I know (hello, how are you, good, brother, goodbye), he eagerly added to my repertoire of basic words in Arabic in the context of our conversation (sister, mom, dad, etc.). I learned that Soud hails from a family of nine, enjoys playing FIFA on Playstation, hopes to be an engineer in the petroleum industry, and has unfortunately experienced the Tallahassee Whataburger. We bonded over cars and a shared preference for McDonald's over Burger King. Although he is in the Foundations group, I believe he has a very high level of speaking and understanding English.