CP Week 2 Catherine

fter last weeks less than stellar meeting with my conversation partner Seong Bong I was looking forward to hopefully connecting more with him and learning more about him, instead of our time together just consisting of me asking him a series of mundane questions. I invited Stephen and his partner to come to lunch with us, since the three of them had become such good friends and constantly hang out and I wanted to show Seong Bong that I was down to hang out with the guys. But sadly I don’t think that that is the vibe he got. The little conversation we had was awkward and short, I think the only question he asked me that scratched the surface of learning more about me other than why I was in TEFL or if I were interested in movies, was when he asked if American women liked Asian men. For most of the meal I felt like the third wheel, since the 3 of them had been hanging out all weekend and even rode over together. I wasn’t upset that they had formed a friendship or that they had been hanging out, I just wish I would have been invited to hang out with them once, so that my meeting with Seong Bong wouldn’t have felt so forced and scheduled. I felt like it was at least the polite thing to do to shoot a text my way. I feel the arrangement but that has formed, hanging out with the "boys" for fun and having to hang out with a girl for CIES made Seong Bong see me as an outsider since he had already made such a connection with Stephen. I didn’t think being paired with a male conversation partner would be a big deal, I pride myself on being able to find a common thread with anyone, but since Seong Bong and I really never got the chance to interact on the level that he and Stephen it greatly hindered any chance we had at having a positive relationship. After leaving our meal I decided that this situation was not working for me, I'm not going to waste my time trying to be a conversation partner when there is no chance of anything really positive coming from it. I went into CIES today and expressed my concerns and luckily they were able to set me up with a new CP, so I am very excited for this second opportunity to be a CP.