Carlos-TP8

This morning, I was able to meet up with Dongseok during tea time. I had tried multiple times to meet with him over the weekend but he was very busy with various things, including helping his girlfriend Anna move furniture. I complimented him for being a good boyfriend before we began. As usual we began with just having a normal conversation, Dongseok armed with his notepad. More than any of my other partners, I am able to really push Dongseok and he is the most receptive of corrections. He even stops and corrects himself when he feels like he is being too proper. We were able to discuss Saturday's dinner, and he explained how grateful he was and how enjoyable the get together was. We eventually began to discuss his options after this CIES session. I'm beginning to realize that many of the students want to get out of CIES as soon as possible, not because it is a poor program, but because of finances. Dongseok is looking into various Universities that his S. Korean University offers exchange programs too. We ran through each one and I asked him what he really wanted out of the school he chooses (size, type of city, tuition, etc). I was able to really give him some insight towards the different schools. What really helped him was my insight in the different American cities and regions in comparison to FSU in Tallahassee. He had never really thought about the type of cities these schools were located in and how different college life could be without considering the location of his future school. We came to the conclusion that he wanted to go to a big school in a city no smaller than Tallahassee. This immediately eliminated many options, but I was able to recommend him to either University of California Long Beach or University of California Fullerton as possible options. We even google mapped a number of campuses to get a feel for certain cities and compared many of them to each other. I feel like I was really able to help Dongseok today, though it was more focused on his future than English speaking. At the same time though, I was able to continuously listen for grammatical errors in Dongseok's speech which he appreciated.