Conversation Partner Meeting 1

Date of occurrence: Feb 9th, 2015

After a week of exchanging emails to find a mutual availability, I met with my conversation partner, Sari, in the BLUU. To my mistake, I waited in Market Square near the swipe register based on the assumption that my partner would also have an unlimited meal plan. After a quick chat and introduction, we moved the conversation to Union Grounds.

Once we found a table, we went into more depth about our respective backgrounds while we signed the conversation partner contract. For about the first 10 minutes, I struggled with my ability to use simple sentence structure when phrasing a question or just simplifying my word choice. Sari had been a member of the Intensive English Program (IEP) for under two years and his command of the English language was impressive, much more so than my foreign language skills after 4 years of high school. Curious, I asked him about the process the IEP program uses to teach at such speed and with a high success rate that seems unknown to most foreign language programs in American high schools.

 Sari was the first Saudi Arabian I have had extensive contact with and I was extremely interested in his background and his views on American culture. His insight on the school system in Saudi Arabia and the prevalence of American media was fascinating to me because although we've discussed the popularity of American media, I did not truly grasp the wide dispersion of American media.

I was surprised to learn that Sari had been to California, New York City, and multiple states within the northeast. We discussed each of our views on California, New York, and West Virginia, where he spent most of his time previously. It soon became apparent that we both hated the cold weather.

We wrapped up after speaking for an hour as I had to leave for class and agreed to meet at the same table each week.