Sabrina - Conversation Partner Wk 5 - "OldBoy"

Shin and I reached our fifth session today. She was much more comfortable and open this time. I think having 6 hours of English a couple of days a week has done wonders for her volume and delivery.

Today was all about movies, movies, movies. We set up inside Panchero's (of course) and busted out the laptop to IMDB and YouTube. We talked about our favorite movies, actors, and actresses. It was nice to communicate on a topic that is so easy to have an opinion about. One of her favorite movies just now is The Notebook. It is a bit of a cheesy love story with a happy predictable ending, but sometimes fluff is good.

I shared a few of my favorites and some ones that I have not seen that I wish to before the Oscars get underway. She told me about a Korean thriller film that she thought I might like called Oldboy and that it had just played at the SLC. She also said that many Korean films get remade here in America under new American titles. Hmmm, that could be so. I told her in India they did the same to American movies only they turned them into 3+ hour musical dancing bonanzas.

(digression link: 111 mins French Kiss turned in to 166 mins Pyaar To Hona Hi Tha)

This was the first conversation I had with her that felt like she was totally comfortable and the conversation flowed.

By the way, she still has not gotten her driver's license but is headed to Atlanta to buy a car (What?!).

Also, she DID call me and leave a message on my machine. Her voice was so cute I thought I was getting a call from Hello Kitty herself!

Sabrina - Tutoring Week 3- "Aaahhhhhh..."

And relaaaaaax. It is oh so nice to finally have a tutoring partner, and one so wonderfully sweet and kind as Serap.

Serap is from Turkey. She is 23 years old and has been in the U.S for just a few months. Her husband is also Turkish but he has acquired his U.S. citizenship and is the Vice Principal at a local school. Her English is extremely basic but she is very eager to learn it; and that as quickly as she can! If she could acquire English by sure will of desire, she would be fluent already.

She has her B.S. in Cellular and Molecular Biology with a concentration in Cellular Immunology and Virology. She wants to get her masters and then Ph.D. in the same.

I ask you to contemplate this: This is a young woman who wants to cure cancer and other terrible diseases, who knows how DNA works, how our cells function, she has worked in a hospital and participated in research, but she cannot hold a simple conversation with the people that surround her. She has built up a good basic vocabulary but her way of speaking is at the poking and jabbing stage. Her deep brown eyes carry her intelligence and also show her frustration.

All her intelligence and experience is trapped behind this puzzle of words and no knowledge (yet) of how to put them together. To say she must feel clogged is putting it lightly, but she is so incredibly eager. She does not seem fearful or particularly shy but she has a quiet sweetness about her that puts me at ease. She is young but she knows what she wants and I found myself wanting it for her, wanting to give her English in a golden box.

I think I just met a life long friend tonight.

Sabrina - Tutoring (attempt) - Week I " Torrential Emptiness"

Today should have been my first day of tutoring at the Center for Global Engagement along with Elizabeth. We had our one hour session well planned and ready to put into action. However, when I arrived at the tutoring room, there was no one there. I am used to being perpetually early to appointments and other obligations so I did not find arriving to an empty space unusual. I flipped on the lights and looked at what was in the room. Soon after, Elizabeth arrived and we went about setting up the sign-in sheet and I prepared what we needed for our planned activities. When there was nothing left to prepare or straighten, nothing to go over "one last time", nothing more to do but wait for our eager international students to file in, Elizabeth and I sat down and chatted.

We continued to chat for several minutes and then several minutes more. It was wonderful. A bit of Spanglish thrown in here and there; I was enjoying listening to her. She talked about her work with the Amnesty International group on campus and I talked about Peruvian food. We both would glance quickly at the door now and again to see if anyone was arriving. No. No one. How about now? No. Not now. Not one. Aaaaand now? Uh-uh.

Did I mention that this was just about 30 mins after the deluge of rain had flooded the parking lot at University Center A sending staff, faculty, and students alike swimming to their cars to save them from the rising waterline? Or that this was a new time slot that Aleks from CGE was trying out? Or that it was lunch time? Did I tell you that my stomach was well aware of the time of day and its necessities? Well, all of these things are, were, did, and did not.

With just 20 mins left to tutor ourselves on how to get essential elements for Papas a la Huancaina transported at a discount from Miami, Elizabeth and I called it a wrap and we headed out.

I think we will give it another whirl on next Thursday but in the meantime I will get with the Leon County Public Library and find out more about tutoring there one on one.

Sabrina - Conversation Partner Week 2 - Making Progress

Today I met with Shin-hye at Panchero's with two of her South Korean friends. We grabbed our lunches and sodas and found a nice spot on the deck outside. I think Shin-hye liked having her friends there for some moral support. One of them spoke English very well as she was brought up in New York after coming to the U.S. at only four years of age.

At first Shin-hye would turn to her to ask in Korean how to say this or that. I didn't want to seem like a hard ass, but I had to put a cease and desist on that one. "No cheating." I said. I still think she is having some trouble with her feeling over her braces. She still covers her mouth and does not open it widely. I mentioned that she had a very soft spoken voice and that I had a hard time hearing her. She needed more volume.

I had asked her to bring a photo of her family so we could talk about that. She opened her lap top to pull up the file and BAM! HK was all up in the place (that's Hello Kitty for the uninitiated). Her laptop had pink Hello Kitty stickers on each key that carried the Korean character an d the corresponding English letter. I expressed my deep jealousy at her HK wealth and we had tiny break through expressing our love of Sanrio and her highness HK.

Shi-hye's greatest challenge is her inability to speak in complete sentences. She said to me during this meeting, as with the last, "I want English very much." I wrote down on her notepad exactly what she had said. I told her, "I understand what you meant, but this is not a complete sentence." I told her there was a missing verb. A very important missing verb that would complete the sentence so that anyone would understand. I asked her what she wanted to do with English and made the hand gesture that one usually uses for a blabber mouth. She instantly got it and we fixed the sentence to "I want TO SPEAK English very much." I know "very Much" sounds a bit strange but I can't see Shin-hye understanding just yet something like "really badly" or "I really want to..."

After she told me some things about her family I told her somethings about me. I told her and wrote down, where I went to undergradute school and what I studied. I shared that I had moved to NYC after and attended the Fashion Institute of Technology for Fashion Design. Shin-hye got very excited about this and said "I like fashion too!" This lead to much more relaxed speaking on her part about her love of clothing and window display design. I asked her next time to bring me a drawing of a fashion idea she had and that she could explain it to me. She seemed embarrassed that her drawing skills may not be up to par.

I asked if she sewed and she said she did not. I told her that if she wanted to learn to sew, I would be happy to teach her and that it would be a good way to practice English and to learn to talk more about something she enjoyed.

Sabrina - Conversation Partner Week 1 - "I Got Seoul!"

When I entered the lounge at the CIES office on Wednesday for the meet and greet I was a bit winded from my ride over from the stadium and the climb up two flights of stairs to reach the fourth floor. My face flushed as it recuperated from the winter air outside. In addition to that, I had little waves of warmth washing up my body from nerves.

The room was buzzing and humming away like a swell of vibrating molecules. I saw many of my classmates scattered about the tables and chairs paired up and engaged in conversations with their partners. I knew my partner's name was Shin-hye and that she was female so I looked around the room to see if I could intuitively pick her out. Ryan saw me scanning with that look on my face I suppose and facilitated an introduction.

My first impression was that in comparison to Shin-hye's cosmopolitan style I must have looked like a slob! My NYC days of fashion-forward expression have been tempered by Tallahassee backyard garb. I tried to read Shin-hye's reaction to our introduction to see if she was disappointed, or afraid, or impressed in one way or another. I think she was just nervous like I was.

It was apparent pretty soon that her spoken English was pretty clunky. The first thing she said was "I need very much help English. My very bad." I immediately went in to slowed down mode and annunciation overdrive. I noticed that I slipped right into this way of speaking without much thought. I used it alot in my past work with non-English speakers assisting with immigration as well and my stint teaching English in India. It is exhausting but it helps; slowing down, finding more simple words to express an idea or to ask a question. Also facing the person you are talking to helps. Shin-hye was looking at my mouth as the words came out to see if there was more understanding to be had direct from the source!

I noticed that she had braces and was covering her mouth quite a bit or keeping her lips closed around her teeth. I imagine this will be an interesting fact as we speak more. I hope she can learn to relax her jaws and move her mouth more freely as she practices speaking English.

I am not sure she understood everything that I said but I sensed that her listening skills are at a higher level than her speaking skills. We shared some basic personal information and I learned that she is 27 years old and is here at FSU studying in The School of Music for her graduate degree as a cellist. She has been studying the cello since she was very young (8 years old). She is from Seoul, South Korea which is the capitol. She finds Tallahassee (our capitol) very pretty and quiet. She would like to visit NYC perhaps on a school break. We shared some thoughts on big city living and the slowness of a place like here.

When I told her I am considerably older than her, that I am 42 years old, she seemed shocked and said "Oh! so old!" I think she believed she was getting another student assigned to her. Although surprised, she did not seem disappointed to have a practically moribund partner to chat with once a week.