Jennifer_TP13

Okay, this is my last tutoring partner entry! I know we were supposed to stop at 12 and not write more than that on the blog, but I had to write about this one since she's leaving this week. I met with Sumayah, my Saudi Arabian tutoring partner. At the very beginning of our session she said she was leaving to go back to Saudi Arabia for two months! This was a shocker for me, she mentioned nothing about leaving before! She will be back at FSU in two months though, and she asked if I could still tutor her after she came back. I said I may not be able to since my school schedule will be different, but that I will let her know, and if I can't tutor her I will find her someone good. :) I wasn't able to meet with her next week because her baby was sick, so we went over a timed writing she did two weeks ago. Apparently she thought she did horribly on it, but she didn't do too bad! Her ideas were clear, and the outline we did helped. I explained some of her grammar errors, what she did great and what she could improve. She then told me that she took the TOEFL this weekend and thought she did very well on the essay section! She also said most of the reading was about science, which was good since she is a math and science person. She thinks she did so-so on the TOEFL. After that I asked her if there was any homework she wanted help with or to go over, and she said she had to tell an American joke in class. She asked me to see if the joke she found was appropriate. Turns out she found a joke that made fun of Americans rather than a joke Americans tell. I explained to her the difference, and told her the joke probably was only appropriate if she was with her very close American friends. She would not want to say this as a casual joke to American acquaintances though, because it basically calls Americans morons. (I thought it was funny overall, but it definitely wasn't what she was trying to find). I proceeded to find a better joke for her. I then realized a very popular "American" joke is blonde jokes. I explained how we had this stereotype that we think all blonde-haired girls who are really pretty are really dumb, although we don't necessarily "believe" this. However, these is are very popular and well-known jokes in America, and there are many of them. I found this joke for her, which she found really funny: "Two blondes lock their keys in the car. One of the blondes tries to break into the car while the the other one watches. Finally the first blonde says 'I can't get in the car!' The other blond replies, 'keep trying, it looks like it is going to rain and the top is down'." (I told her I know her teacher will get it if anything!). It was fun getting to introduce some culture to her. Then we read through three passages of an easier science book and answered questions to it. She ended up learning what fossils and meteorites were! I told her about my culture class at 12pm on Thursday if she could make it, but I told her not to worry about it if she was packing and stuff. I will miss Sumayah - I hope I'll get to see her when she comes back in two months! Anyways, that's it for me as far as tutoring blogs! :)