Katie- CP 2

Yesterday I met with my conversation partner, Areum, a very nice Korean girl who is the same age as me. We exchanged pleasantries and briefly talked about what we did for the fourth of July, after which she jumped straight into some basic grammar questions. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to answer her as best I could, but it made me wonder how to draw the line between tutors and conversation partners, and how defined that line needed to be. Areum had a sheet given to her to fill out with a number of questions she was supposed to ask me, so we spent a good portion of the hour doing a mini interview. She was very interested in my interest in Japanese and Korean culture, and wanted to know a lot about how I found out about her culture. After that was finished, she told me that she wanted to learn idioms and proceeded to pull out yet another class worksheet. We talked about the phrases on her worksheet briefly before she asked me to share some more commonly used idioms used in daily speech amongst college students today. It was difficult to think of any, and at first I found myself drawing a blank before the funny phrases my sorority sisters often use came flooding back into my memory. It was interesting explaining words like “legit” and “ignant” to her. I encouraged her to write down any expressions she heard that she didn’t understand to bring to our next session. I feel like Areum might not have the highest level of listening or speaking skills, and often gets a little stuck when trying to think of how to phrase something, but she is very easy to talk to. With our shared interest in each other’s cultures, I think we will get along very well in the next few weeks. She even asked if she could introduce me to her visiting sister, which I thought was very sweet. I’m curious as to what we will talk about next Tuesday!