Katelyn_TP_#11

I met Hamed, Mohammed and Zhongu for our tutoring session at the Grandmarc apartments--the first time we were all together. As we had talked about family relations last time, I prepared a powerpoint and a family tree--only from my mother's side--to show them. I drew my family tree on the board while we waited for Zhongu to arrive, and then I projected the powerpoint and explained the titles as we went along. Mohammed knew almost all of the vocabulary--he had covered these points at CIES, but Hamed and Zhongu did not know most of them, which made the class a bit difficult. We talked about the immediate family, extended, and then far and unusual titles.
Hamed told me that in his family tree, he would not write his father's name if he was only talking about his mother's side of the family as it wouldn't be relevant in Kuwaiti culture, which surprised me. He also told me that there is no such thing as Sr./Jr. in Kuwait, or in any Islamic culture, because you would be called "Hamed, son of Hamed." Instead, he explained, names skip a generation: his great-great-grandfather was Mohammed, then his great-grandfather was Hamed, then his father is Mohammed, then he is named Hamed, and his future son would be named Mohammed, and so on. Zhongu said that in China, in "old cities" names are "(first name) 1, 2, 3, 4," using the Chinese character to distinguish the names. This is because of the importance of age hierarchy in Chinese culture--I thought that was interesting. Hamed and Mohammed were surprised that there is only "aunt" or "uncle"--in their culture, there is a term for "male aunt" and "female uncle" as well, depending on the speaker's gender AND the gender of the niece or nephew. It was a very interesting culture point, one that I had never heard of.
Furthermore, I learned that in Kuwait, it is perfectly normal to marry your (first) cousin. I said that in America, in most states, it is illegal to marry your cousin--Zhongu said the same thing about China. Hamed and Mohammed kept asking me why this was, and I honestly had trouble explaining. I said it maybe had something to do with genetics down the line, but I don't think that answer satisfied them, and I didn't have any evidence to back it up.
I had a lot trouble getting Zhongu to talk during this lesson, as Hamed and Mohammed both wanted to speak, and would often talk over him. I often would ask him questions directly, but he would just say that titles are the same for his family.
This tutoring session was good, because I think it had a lot of experiences similar to a real classroom. There was the very quiet student, the loud student, the challenging student, and the difficult cultural questions--overall, it was good practice, but I wish I had been able to get Zhongu to speak more.