Christiana CP#1

Date/Time: May 10, 2017; 7:00-8:30 P.M.
Location: Starbucks on Tennessee Street
Topic: Family, friends, culture, religion, school.
Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: Similarities and differences between the Catholic and Muslim religions, geography of each of our hometowns.

Nasar and I met at Starbucks off Tennessee street for coffee and spent an hour and a half having great conversation and getting to know each other a bit. We spoke about his home country of Kuwait and how he came to America this past October only knowing the words "yes" and "no" and how he is  now in group 2, which I told him was an impressive time span to have learned so much. We were able to communicate with relative ease but he asked me to correct any errors he makes whether it is on word choice, pronunciation, etc. and so, as we spoke about family, friends, culture, and life I did just that, making sure to have him repeat things that he mispronounced or said incorrectly. I learned that he comes from a family with 7 children and that his mother is a teacher and his father is a businessman and he, his mother and his older brother are the only ones who are able to speak any English. I then spoke about where I am from and my family and we shared similarities and differences in family dynamics and showed each other our hometowns on the map. We then spoke about how it would be Ramadan soon and that his family was preparing accordingly and I talked about Easter and how Lent has some similarities to  Ramadan in fasting rules, etc. I learned about life in Kuwait and how it is illegal to consume alcohol there and we chatted about the drinking culture here in the U.S and how different it would be to live and go to school there. He expressed his desire to get better at english so that he may go to college here in the US, in either Minnesota or Pennsylvania and told me about how he needed to do well on his ISLETS in order to be able to do so. By the time i looked at my phone an hour and a half had gone by and we were both very hungry and decided to call it a night. We planned to meet again on Monday at the same time and thought it would be a good idea to look at the reading section of his Islets book as well as chat more about how he could improve on his reading comprehension skills. I'm really looking forward to our next meeting and seeing how the rest of the session goes for him as he continues to improve on his english skils!