Alexa Scalchunes CP #1

 Today I met with my conversation partner, Zahrae, over Zoom.

Before I met Zahrae over Zoom for the first time she told me she lives in Kuwait, so there was a large time difference. While it was 3 pm for me, it was 10 pm for her, so she has to do all of her CIES classes later in the day. When we logged on and introduced ourselves, we first discussed what our educational paths were in school and what we wanted to do in the future. I shared that I am in international affairs and learned that Zahrae is working towards a Masters degree in psychology. Additionally, she shared why she wanted to learn more English and I discussed why I am taking the TEFL course. I have a very close friend who speaks Arabic as well, so we talked about the differences in the language and how her kid's first language is now English, not Arabic, similar to my friend.

Moving forward, we discussed places we had traveled to, Zahrae had been to New York and Florida, which is coincidentally the two states I have lived in. I learned that Kuwait is extremely hot, over 110 degrees sometimes. Neither of us have traveled West within the United States, but we talked about California and what we think it is like there. Additionally, we discussed cultural differences that occur within the United States and different regional dialects. Zahrae shared that she was a bit self conscious about her accent. To this I told her that the United States is full of so many different accents and dialects and they are considered pretty normal here and that Zahrae spoke amazingly. 

I really enjoyed speaking with Zahrae and am looking forward to our next Zoom session.