Jackson_ITA1

Last Tuesday I had the unexpected pleasure of meeting with Zhongjun, an ITA from China studying Bio-physics. Of all the international students that I've met both through CIES and through the center for global engagement, Zhongjun's accent seemed to be the hardest for me to understand. It took me 15 minutes to figure out how to pronounce his name correctly! He understood though and was very patient with me. It is clear that his speaking skills certainly have a long way to go before they are fully developed. I felt bad because it appeared that he was becoming frustrated because he wasn't able to express himself as clearly as I think he wanted to. There was a lot of give and take during our conversation and I was trying my best to help him along with his thoughts and ideas. I have a feeling though that this may because he was nervous or shy in that setting which is why he may have had a tough time constructing sentences. We've had a lot of correspondence through E-mail in order to set up our first Skype session (which will be taking place later tonight!) I'm nervous to see how talking with Zhongjun will be over Skype but I have a lot of ideas about how I may be able to get him engaged in some good conversation (mainly showing him the dogs in my house as well as playing my guitar/piano/violin some). I also plan on sending him some funny pictures and videos from the internet that we may be able to both laugh over. It will certainly be a new experience Skyping with a conversation partner as opposed to meeting them in person, but I am looking forward to it and can't wait to write about it and fill you all in on how it went!