Hello all,
I met with two of my
conversation partners and a tutee for lunch at the Piteria today, and I've now
truly realized the bonding force a shared meal can have amongst relative
strangers. Apart from the natural points of discussion ('What did you order?"
or "How does it taste?"), the pauses needed for chewing allow time
for one to reflect and gather one's thoughts or think of something to say; the
conversation was enthusiastic and flowed well, but this must be in part
credited to there being four people present. I imagine a lot more effort would
be needed on my part if it were one on one. Before getting into any specifics
of the conversation (extremely captivating in itself), a few observations and
generalities about my CP’s:
Daniel is 18 and from Ecuador.
He’s been here for two weeks I think. He speaks fairly well but has trouble
expressing some ideas and pronouncing some words. Accent is not distracting.
Abdullah is 19
(although he looks 25) and from Saudi Arabia. He seems to rush when he speaks
and his accent is very strong so that he is quite hard to understand sometimes.
My tutee Hamad was
also there. He’s a 21 year old from Kuwait. He has a similar accent to Abdullah
but enunciates much better in English.
They all struggled at
some point to express a more complex idea.
We discussed many
things, but two topics stood out. The first was movies: I asked them what
movies they had seen recently and we compared favorites and made suggestions.
Both Hamad and Abdullah listed The Godfather as their favorite film so I asked
them if they had seen Goodfellas (they hadn't, which to my feigned shock was a crime). We
talked about subtitles and whether or not they used them, and they said they
often have English subtitles so they can read and listen at the same time.
The most interesting
part of lunch was when Hamad and Abdullah started listing and debating
differences between their Muslim cultures, such as the right-denied in Saudi
Arabia but allowed in Kuwait-for women to drive. This was amazing to both
Daniel and myself; being from Western cultures we couldn’t believe some of the
things we heard. The debate was emphatic, and I was worried at one point that
the conversation would sour, but it remained a friendly dispute of values.
Overall a pleasant and
eye opening experience.
-dhugal
Kudos for being able to coordinate so many in one meeting! Like your students, I often watch Spanish language films with the Spanish subtitles to read and listen.
ReplyDeleteIt's great that you got to have a casual meeting with people of different backgrounds. A sort of casual United Nations over Pitas!
Dude. Mind if I call you dude? Dude, this sounds like it went really well. I like the idea of having a small group in a conversation. It eases the tension a bit and allows people to open up a bit. Especially around a meal.
ReplyDeleteProps, dude. Props.