Serena CP#1

Date/Time: August 31st 3:00-4:40pm

Location: Strozier Starbucks

Topic discussed: Family, background, Comparing Korean/American culture

Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: Speaking with Jimin was very fun and entertaining. She has only been here in the US for two months. She will be here until the end of January to study and then will go back to Korea to complete her undergraduate degree. She is currently undecided in what she wants to study but is leaning towards psychology. I was surprised by this but she told be that psychology is a recently growing field in Korea. Her whole family lives here with her. Her dad is in administration, though I didn't fully understand what that meant so she told me she would look it up and explain it more later. She also has two younger sisters and her mom living here with her. They have all been here for a year now but she moved here only recently. She explained some of the differences between Korean and American culture, she described that the only stereotype she really hears about Americans is that they are more free-spirited. She also mentioned that she heard Americans when given gifts from friends may be more resistant at first while it is very natural in Korea. These were interesting perspectives that I have never thought about.

The biggest challenge of the conversation was that she was shy to talk for too long at a time because her lack of confidence in her current speaking abilities. Also I couldn't always tell how much of what I was telling her she fully understood. I tried to slow down the pace of my speech but she probably didn't acknowledge a lack of understanding for everything she didn't understand. I'm assuming if she understood most of what I was saying she just nodded to keep the conversation going. Her vocabulary was limited at times, which was fine but made it more challenging to keep the conversation going back and forth.