Conversation Round 2

I had my second meeting with my conversation partner today in the BLUU. This meeting lacked the uncertainty and awkwardness of our first meeting but it wasn't completely free of misunderstanding.  We began by comparing our hectic schedules during our first round of tests. Tiffany was relieved because she had taken her two tests the week before and was looking forward to a week of relative peace. I was just getting started and had three tests to go for the week. Tiffany explained that her workload now was lighter compared to what she had during high school in China. She said that High School was taken very seriously and she had to work on homework nearly every night. She also noted that high school sports were not a very big deal in China either. Growing up in Texas, the order of importance was almost the complete opposite in high school. Academics were almost a side note to athletics for a majority of the year.

Our conversation then shifted to sports and entertainment in general. I asked Tiffany, if there are any major sports in China that everyone goes to watch. She said people in China do not flock to major sporting events like they do in America. In China it is much more common to go to a concert or watch some other major entertainer. I began to wonder how Tiffany viewed sports here at TCU. She said she went to the first football game but had no idea what was going on because she did not know any of the rules for the game. I can understand how this could make a football game difficult to watch. While we were discussing these generally social subjects I decided to ask Tiffany briefly about humor in China. She did not go too in depth but said that one of the major forms of humor in modern China is in TV shows. The characters behave in a ridiculous manner or imitate some other well-known Chinese personality.  This is similar to some forms of humor in the United States. I am sure there are other forms of humor in China that we will discuss later.

This second conversation also had some minor misunderstandings similar to the first, most of the time regarding tenses. I asked Tiffany what she did last weekend and she replied that she had no plans for the upcoming weekend. She quickly realized she had mixed things up and told me she had gone out with her friends to eat crawfish. After a quick conversation about how delicious crawfish are we each departed for class and set up our next meeting.