Jessica CP4

Alonso and I met up yesterday for what was going to be a lesson, but turned out to be a more casual hang out. We're actually getting to be quite good friends. Since here in FL its a bazillion degrees during the day we met up to go swimming at the pool at my apartment complex. We hung out and talked about a ton of different things, at first in Spanish, but then we switched to English only. He was telling me about practical jokes he played in elementary school with stink bombs and how his aunts and uncles always told him he should focus more on his studies like his cousins. I sympathized with that, not for being a trouble maker, but for having different views from most of my family and having them constantly question what I think or say. We agreed that it's way better to have a world where people have different life styles and ways of doing things and that our families can learn from us just like we can learn from them. There's no one right way of going about life. This of course led to a conversation about religion, on which he and I have different view points, but we had a great discussion about why we each feel the way we do. This was done in a mix of English and Spanish to sort out some of the more difficult to explain parts. The fantastic thing about Alonso is that he has no shame in trying to speak English, he'll jump right into a story and play charades or talk around a point if needed to get the message across. Even though he has a low level of fluency he's great at communicating and putting effort into telling stories and having conversations. I told him that and that I thought that he had already made some great progress, which elicited a quizzical look from him. But I insisted, it is true, just in the few weeks I've known him, since the first meeting where he could do little more than introduce himself he has come a long way!