Jeff Dinert CP9

This was a fun meeting, for my girlfriend and I had a dinner party for three of our American friends, and we invited Hoa and his wife Tam Phan and my tutee Abdhulrahmand. I thought it would be a fun evening to eat and have a bunch of different English conversations in a natural setting for such, also the conversations would be a bit faster that Abdhulrahmand is used to, but a lot closer to reality, and would force him to listen and answer a good deal of questions. We had roast chicken, roasted vegetables and potatoes with smoked paprika, mustard greens and spinach with garlic and lemon, homemade french country mac and cheese, barbecue tempeh burritos, fresh fruit, and a berry cobbler with vanilla gelato for desert. The conversations ran from Chemistry, to being a chef, to my friend Sean being an architect, to Ashley his wife being a nurse, to Hoa's wife being pregnant with her first child and studying to take the American Pharmacy test, to Abdhulrahmand explaining his information technology major and the two books he has written back in Saudi Arabia. We ate too much and there were two conversations at least going on consecutively, and I looked over to Abdhul because he looked lost and he said " is alright, very fun very happy, thank you Jeff," so I slowed down the table a bit to explain to Abdhul what we had been talking about. The most surprising part of the evening besides we did not explode from eating so much, was when I used the word, "loquacious" and a Hoa asked for a definition, and so did two of my American friends, and out of the blue, a very shy Tam said, "It means talkative from the root loc." And everybody laughed and was impressed, and dinner lasted probably another hour before everyone left and I took Abdhul home. I have found that with my conversation partners, that they really enjoy talking to as many people as possible and for Abdhul my tutee, being in an environment where it is a bunch of folks only speaking in English, is a welcome change from at home where everybody speaks in Arabic .