My conversation partner and I
started our last meeting together the same way we started our first meeting. We
took a walk around campus. I met her at the rec center and we headed out
toward the other side of campus.
After exchanging our normal
pleasantries about school, she started telling me about one of her class
assignments and how she was talking to her fellow IEP students in her native language, but
no one else spoke that language, so they had no idea what it was she was saying.
I was curious to finally hear what the language my conversation partner spoke
sounded like, and I asked her to say something in her first language. I learned
and repeated back to her phrases such as “I’m good”, “thank you”, “hello” and
“how are you.” It was really interesting trying to speak her native language
because it was something I had never encountered before. She said that she was
surprised at how well I was able to repeat those phrases back to her, and that if
she could have recorded me no one would have known that I was American. I
guessed that my ability to repeat her language back to her had something to do
with the fact that my choir when I was little would sing in different
languages.
This is something else that we had
in common because she sang back in her home country. We started talking about
how when she would sing in a different language they wouldn’t teach her what
the words mean. When my choir sang in another language, we normally had the
translation to sing next.
We kept walking and talking about
many different subjects including the many injuries that I have gotten being so
clumsy. I listed some of my funnier injuries such as hitting myself in the face
with my tennis racquet (on accident). It was fun to share these stories because
it was like talking with a friend.
On of the most interesting things
that we talked about on our walk was the cultural differences in our families. She
mentioned that she would fight with her brother when they disagreed about
something, but she wouldn’t argue with her parents. I had a completely
different experience, because I will argue with my parents. We talked about how
we navigate experiences where we don’t agree with our parents. It was
interesting because we had such different ways of disagreeing with our parents,
but we both agreed that we needed to respect our parents. One of the things I
stressed was that if you wanted to argue, you needed to be ready to accept the consequences
of arguing with your parents.
After this discussion, we walked by
Sid-Richardson and I remembered that the meteorite gallery was there. I asked her if
she had been there before and she said no. We quickly went into the building
and signed into the meteorite gallery. Signing in was a visual reminder that we
both come from such different places because we had to put down where we were
from on the sign in sheet. I took her on a quick tour of the meteorite gallery
and it was a lot of fun. While we didn’t have a lot of time to look around (I
had class at 2pm), we still managed to hit the highlights of the meteorite
gallery. This included playing on the computers and testing out different
meteorite simulations. Naturally, we chose to try out the building sized meteorite.
It made a huge hole in the ground! My favorite part of our “express” tour of
the gallery was when we touched a piece of Mars. Even though we both came from
different backgrounds, we shared a similar experience and touching Mars just
seemed like a visual representation of that.
It was extremely fun meeting my
conversation partner this semester. While some aspects were challenging, such
as finding time in our crazy schedules to meet, it was a rewarding experience,
because I have gained a new friend. Even though I am done blogging about my
experiences with my conversation partner, I hope that we will still meet up and
hang out as friends. It was awesome to meet someone that has such a different
background that you can still be friends with. I’ll miss getting to hang out
with her when she graduates the program this semester and transfers to another
school, but hopefully we will keep in touch!
My Conversation Partner and I touching Mars:
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