My first meeting with my first conversation partner was a few weeks ago. At the first tea time I met Gyusang Yi, a student at CIES from South Korea. We spent the hour just getting to know a little bit about each other.
My first question for Gyusang was the same I wonder about a lot of the students at CIES- why come to Tallahassee? Don't get me wrong, I love it here and have had a great 4 years of school, but this tiny Florida capital doesn't strike me as the cultural destination for international learners of English. With Gyusang I found out he's here because his father works at FSU as an assistant professor in the political science/public administration (there was a bit of a language barrier when Gyusang was talking about it, but I think that's the job he was trying to explain!).
While we were on the topic of university, I asked him if he was trying to go to college in the U.S like so many of his fellow students, or if he was anxious to go home to Korea. Gyusang laughed and said "No, I will go back to Korea." It turns out Gyusang actually already started school back home, and after his freshman year, came here to study English. We talked a little bit about Tallahassee vs. Seoul and how he misses the big city and all of his friends a lot, which I told him I can relate to somewhat since I moved around a lot when I was growing up. The funniest thing I found in his comparison of the cities is he said in Tallahassee, the capitol building is a big building, but in Seoul, it is the most usual size. I can only imagine coming from a huge city full of people to a small college town in Northern Florida- talk about culture shock!
When it was time for TEFL class, Gyusang thanked me for being his partner and we agreed to meet for tea time every Tuesday.
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