Jackie-CP6

My conversation partners sometimes decide to scatter on me, but the group we always meet with stayed with me this day, and one of them could be there. It was a tiring week, so we all were kind of inhaling cookies and coffee for our sanity, and talking about everyday things. I showed them what I was working on with my tutee, which they told me they understood, but it is interesting how interested they constantly are about learning English. I suppose if you are somewhere that everybody speaks one language, and nobody speaks yours, your primary goal is to learn it--and of course, that is what they do all day! But, it is always fascinating; especially because at FSU learning a language mostly seemed annoying or cumbersome to people when they had to have it for their degree requirements. I told them about this, and how I enjoyed how happy they were to learn. They seemed to think it was normal, and were sort of confused that anyone would get an education they didn't completely want. But, then they also understood, because we WERE stuffing our faces with cookies from sheer exhaustion from the school and, for me at least, work week. I taught them that expression: "to stuff" your face. As well, we talked about other colloquial or idiomatic phrases. Like, "inhaling" food. It's funny to see their faces when I say things like that, because I know when I learn those kind of phrases in other languages it is often hilarious! The associations made between two things, often extremely common things, are often so different and outlandish--it is funny to actually think about a lot of everyday metaphors we use and how they could be completely crazy!