Conversation #1

On Monday I met with my conversation partner for the first time this semester. I wasn't sure what to expect and only knew I was looking for a girl named Tiffany Teng as I sat outside the BLUU scanning over every potential person. After about ten minutes of waiting I checked my phone and saw that she had just sent me an email saying she was at Union Grounds. After the initial confusion we met, shook hands, and began our first discussion.

I soon learned that Tiffany is nineteen years old and living on campus in Colby. It was a relief to realize my partner would be someone I had quite a bit in common with. This semester she is taking several classes for the IEP program as well as a Psychology and Survey of Music class. After this spring, she will enroll as a full-time freshman in the fall. Her English was hard to understand at first and I had to ask her to repeat a few words here and there. I also noticed more subtle differences in her vocabulary.  For instance instead of saying someone was sick she would say that they had illness.  Tiffany said that she began learning English in middle school but has really had to work on it since she moved last year.  Tiffany said that language was not a barrier for her in her everyday conversations but could be quite a challenge in her psychology class because of all the new abstract terms and vocabulary.

After getting the basics out of the way, we started to compare our hometowns and childhood. Tiffany’s family lives in a medium sized village in southeast China near Shanghai.  She said that the village is crowded but her family has a decent sized house because both of her parents are government officials. Even though she didn't grow up in a huge city, I pictured it as a much different environment than the small spread out Texas town I called home. We then started comparing our families and found even bigger differences.   Tiffany is an only child and explained how China’s one child policy had significantly affected families in China. This was also a sharp contrast to growing up in a family with nine children.  We continued talking about everything from daily life in China to Texas weather and food. I could tell she enjoyed living in Texas but missed several things about China. Our conversation ended and we agreed to meet again next week.

Overall, the conversation had its awkward moments but wasn't as bad as I thought it could have been. The conversation was a little one sided, with me doing most of the talking mainly in the form of questions. Even though you could tell English wasn't her first language, Tiffany could adapt very quickly and pick up new words just from things I had said. I didn't get a chance to ask her about Chinese humor but I’m sure it will come up by the end of the semester.