Ted Hong - CP2

Last Thursday, May 10, I met with Joyce in the CIES lounge. Xueping was there for a bit, too. The conversation started with us assessing my fluency in Mandarin Chinese which was... well, supposedly my tones were good and I can identify words but I can't string a sentence along. Both Xueping and Joyce said they'd be more than happy to help me in developing my Chinese some more, which is awesome but I digress.

Joyce and I got to know each other via the initial rote and droll interview process but it picked up more naturally as we went on. She told me that she had been here for about 7-8 months, wanted to be a nurse and definitely wanted to do some serious road-tripping during her summer session while she could. She's not taking classes right now as she did it full time the past two semesters, thus allowing her time off. She seems quite interested in history and other cultural aspects about America. For instance, in her previous conversation session, she had gone over some slang expressions (groovy, rad). They were kind of hard to explain. Hah. I ended up going on to explain movements of the 70s and a possible etymological explanation of the word groovy (given the art designs, psychedelic feel, etc... uh...). As for rad, I simply gave the explanation that it was a variation of "cool". Meant radical, equivalent to "far out, man" more or less.

Her English is actually rather nice. I spoke with her like I would speak with anyone else and she reciprocated the same. She wanted to check out some historical stuff after I told her that I majored in Philosophy and history... but truth be told, I'm a bit rusty on the historical facts. I suggested to take her to some museums and I forget how but even Lofty Pursuits. We've made plans to go this Wednesday, meet at 330 on campus and be there by 4. I'm meeting a few TEFL students and some other CIES students there so it should make for a fun occasion.