Celina_CP #1 (IE)

   For my first conversation partner session, I attended Ramin's Level 4 speaking class. It was a little intimidating at first, all of the CIES students stood on one side of the room and all of the TEFL students on the other just kind of looking at each other. But after we got some directions, everyone really warmed up to each other and began to talk. The CIES students had prepared a list of questions to ask us about some topics they were very interested in. They rotated around the room in pairs and found different TEFL students to sit down with and ask their questions. The first pair I spoke to were two female students, one from Brazil and one from Puerto Rico. They asked me some questions about health and nutrition in America. We all laughed a lot because I told them that even though many people around the world see American's as just fat and lazy, many Americans are actually obsessed with being healthy. They told me about how they often struggled to find healthy options at restaurants here. They also told me about the differences between media pressure for female body image in their countries and in America. The next student I got to speak with was from Saudi Arabia, he asked me some questions about what I knew about his home country, and how I felt about the spread of westernization. He was a little more difficult to understand than the previous students, but I was able to help him spell out some new words to use! He explained to me how very different it was to live in America, and how much more freedom he gets to experience here.
This was such an interesting and fun way to get to know some CIES students, and it really opened my eyes a little more to things foreign students experience here in the U.S.