Katelyn_TP_#4

On January 21st, I had my second tutoring lesson at the GrandMarc apartments. Hamed did not arrive--I later found out that he had not slept the previous night and missed my texts saying that we had a tutoring session on Wednesday--so I worked only with Mohammed that day. We started off by talking about Mohammed's Arabic coffee pot; he had a show-and-tell presentation the next day and wanted to ask me some questions about it. He didn't know the word for "lid" or "spout," so I demonstrated the "I'm a little teapot" song and wrote down the vocabulary for him. I asked him questions about the coffee pot as well: When does one use this? How is it used? What does Arabic coffee taste like? and so on. We also talked about the shape--I said it looked like a squash, and since Mohammed didn't know what that was, I showed him some photos on my phone. When I said it looked like a pear, he repeated "bear?" After some discussion I realized that many Arabic speakers have difficulty differentiating P and B.
As he had to write a draft for his midterm, we talked about CIES and its programs as well. I looked over his draft--it was rather good--and we talked about some idioms, which Mohammed said he really wanted to learn more of. I mentioned "breaking the ice" as a word that means "to get to know someone." As Mohammed asked me to explain more in depth, I brought up the example of "the tip of the iceberg," saying that people are like icebergs--mostly hidden beneath their outer traits (which is something we had just briefly brought up at the end of Ramin's class last week). I asked him to tell me one in Arabic, and he said there's a phrase that translates to something along the lines of "when the cow travels with his horns, then (this) will happen." I laughed and replied that we have an English equivalent of that phrase, also involving farm animals doing ridiculous things: "when pigs fly."
After the topic of cows and pigs, I asked if he had pets--he told me he has camels and horses, and his brother is a professional rider. I was surprised, and asked how many brothers he has. Mohammed replied that he has 6 brothers and four sisters (11 kids total!!) and showed me some photos of his house in Kuwait. It really surprised me. He also showed me a photo of his grandfather wearing traditional clothing and asked what I would call one of the garments (a bisht) in English. I was stumped--I said maybe a robe or a cloak, but Mohammed insisted it wasn't like either of those. I shrugged and said to just call it what is is in Arabic: as it's a cultural article of clothing, I would think he could call it a bisht and people would probably understand. After all, I explained, you wouldn't say a "Japanese summer robe," you'd just call it a yukata--that's just what it is. He looked at me and said, "wakata?" I was confused, and repeated "yukata." He laughed and replied, "oh, I thought you said wakata, which would mean 'to understand.'" I looked at him, shocked, and asked how he knew Japanese. He explained that it was because many people in Kuwait watch anime--I was so surprised, I had no idea before. Overall, it was a very interesting lesson: I learned quite a lot about Kuwaiti culture and habits, and Mohammed learned some new vocabulary and added some idioms to his collection.