Breanna CP #5

Date/Time: 6/2/16, 11:50am

Location: Starbucks on West Tennessee

Topic discussed: Weather, making friends, difficulties in learning English

Cultural Topics you and your partner learned: Pham and I went out for coffee and we talked about the weather first. She asked if we could sit outside because inside of Starbucks was too cold for her. We discussed our differences in temperature preferences because Pham is from Vietnam, a very hot climate year-round, and I am from Wisconsin, a very cold climate most of the year. Pham also told me how difficult it was for her to make “best friends” here in the U.S. She told me she was able to make friends easily enough, but she is going to be at CIES for about a year or more. She said she has best friends in Vietnam, but she is not able to make deep relationships with people in the U.S. She also told me about her fears of talking with her professors here at CIES. She said in Vietnam, she does not speak to her teachers at all. She said she is struggling in her listening class and her teacher thinks that she is not participating. This is because she is not able to understand what she is listening to, so she can’t answer the questions. She is scared to tell her professor because of her culture in Vietnam. We talked about how teachers in the U.S. want their students to talk to them, and the differences between teachers here and Vietnam.