Christiana CP #6

Date/Time: June 14, 7:00-8:00pm
Location: Campus Circle Study Rooms
Topic: Future plans/IELTS
Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: I learned a bit more about the IELTS and we both learned about each other's future plans. 

I met Nasar for our last meeting at the campus circle study room for an hour, he has the IELTS coming up this weekend so I think he was happy to get a little bit of time away from his studies. We chatted about his goal for the exam which is to get a 5.5 so that he is able to attend University in Minnesota, we talked more about his goal to go there over other places because there are not very many people from Kuwait compared to many of the other universities that he was considering. I commended him on that decision to truly immerse himself in American culture in a way that many would be afraid to do. We then started talking about me and what my plans were once I got my TEFL certification and I expressed my desire to live in a Spanish speaking country and we talked about my options in Spain and South America, he was curious on whether I had any interest in going to the UAE, or any other countries near the Persian Gulf. We discussed those countries in more depth and I explained that in my research I had seen that many job opportunities there would require me to have a few years of experience teaching before I would be qualified enough to be hired there. He told me that after a few years teaching I should consider moving to one of these countries and I told him I would. Conversation started to slow down to a natural stopping point and we said our goodbyes, wishing each other luck in our future endeavors and expressing our thanks for having met each other and learned a bit about each others' cultures over the past few weeks. I told him to let me know how is IELTS goes and to keep in touch with future plans and he told me to do the same. It has been a great experience getting to know Nasar and being able to learn more about Islam, Kuwait and the culture directly from him. I was also happy to answer his questions about American culture and I feel that we both benefitted from our conversations this semester and I look forward to meeting many people from many different cultures while teaching abroad, wherever I end up!