A New Perspective

Like any other student entering high school for the first time, I woke up on my first day as a freshman with butterflies in my stomach. I was worried about classes, teachers, and, most of all, about making friends. Little did I know that I would meet a friend on the first day that would greatly impact my world view.

I remember arriving to homeroom bright and early at 7:00. It seemed that everyone knew each other and already had someone to talk to. I was rather shy, so I felt uncomfortable joining in an already-started conversation. Instead, I looked for someone who seemed to be quiet, like myself. I happened upon a girl who was sitting at a table alone and doodling absentmindedly on a piece of notebook paper. I approached and sat down, introducing myself soon after. She introduced herself as "Amalia," and I could immediately tell from her accent that she was not from Las Vegas, or even the United States. I asked where she was from, and she explained that she was an exchange student from Germany. This amazed me, as it was my first experience with meeting someone my age that was from another country. I was completely intrigued, and asked her so many questions. I cannot remember exactly what I asked her or how she answered, but I do remember the impact of meeting someone who came from somewhere completely different than what I was used to. Indeed, when my parents asked me if I had made any friends that day, I enthusiastically told them all about Amalia and Germany.

As I said, this was my first encounter with a young student from another country. I had always realized that people lived across the globe, but I had never really stopped to ponder that people actually lived other places. I mean, foreign countries always appeared to me as outlines of land with a name printed across it, as seen on a map. I never thought about how people live there and carry out their lives in the same manner that we do here. Talking with Amalia and learning about her culture completely opened my eyes to the fact that the world is a big place- with different people living in different places and engaging in different activities. This creates so many different perspectives and different world views. This epiphany, of sorts, greatly influenced me and made me interested in other cultures and traveling. I love living here, but I think that it is so interesting to learn about the way other people live. And, thanks to Amalia, I realized that it is important to learn about the people that live in other countries because it makes you realize that they are actually people living there, and not just numbers in a population map. It is important to know this, as it keeps perspective on humanity. In all, Amalia taught me much about both myself and the way that I believe the world should be viewed.

通訊

The title of this post is the Chinese translation for "communication". I chose to title it in a different language to highlight the differences in communication that my conversation partner, Simon, and I went through. When we were first assigned to our partners and received their contact information, I had assumed that email would be the best means of communication. However, I waited close to two weeks without a reply, and finally received a phone call from an unknown number. I answered, and was pleased to be met with a voice who introduced himself as Linze Hu (Simon is his American name) and informed me that he had problems with his internet and that the best way to contact him in the future would be through text. We hung up, and I texted him a little later saying that I was glad to have talked to him and asking when the best time to meet would be. He promptly texted back, and we had a great conversation establishing a meeting date/time, and also some essentials like major, age, and that sort of thing.

For the first few weeks, our method of texting and keeping the same meeting day and place worked out well. However, we hit a problem when Simon needed to pay his phone bill. His service had been cut off for a bit until he paid. Instead, I received a text from his friend, Mikko (See blog, "An Eager New Face",) saying that she was acting as Simon's communicator, as he had not gone to the phone store yet. This worked well for a bit, as Mikko was trying to meet with us, too. However, she soon informed me that she had received her own communication partner, and that she would no longer be meeting with us. So, I went back to trying to email Simon, yet with the same success I first had. This problem in communication was demoralizing, and made it very difficult to try and set up meeting times.

Thus, problems in communication would probably be the one thing that I would try and simplify in next semester's partner program. It really is an amazing idea, with the chance for both the IEP and Lit/Civ students to learn much about one another and to grow as individuals with more of a global mindset. Problems in communication detract some from this, and thus it would be easier to have a mandated day, place, and time to meet. I really liked the idea brought up in class of meeting the students outside of their IEP class. This way, everyone would be in the same place. Other than this, I would maybe further emphasize the idea of having a concrete day/time picked out with your partner from the beginning, and sticking with that. This could be emphasized in the syllabus. Part of the problem with our conversation set-up was that we had to switch days often due to prior commitments from the both of us. It made it difficult to know what to expect, and thus made communication a key. If we had emphasized keeping the same day/time from the beginning, perhaps it would have been easier to meet and we would have depended less on technology for communication. However, I greatly enjoyed the program and know that, if given the opportunity to participate again in the future, I would be much more understanding of the possible problems of contacting and organizing. In all, despite the communication problems, I am extremely thankful for the time I spent conversing with Simon!

An Eager New Face

One day, on the day before I was to meet with my conversation partner, Simon, I received a text from him saying that he was going to bring a friend from his IEP class to our meeting. I was excited about this, and I became even more excited when I received a text from his friend, Mikko, the next day before out meeting. In the text, she wanted to confirm the time, and also wanted to introduce herself and tell me that she was communicating for Simon as well, since his phone had run out of service. Sadly, however, on this day I was feeling ill and had decided to visit the Health Center. This visit made me 40 minutes late to the meeting, time during which Mikko continued to text me and let me know that it was okay.

When I finally arrived at our meeting spot, the Barnes & Noble bookstore, I found the familiar face of Simon sitting with a girl around our same age. The girl introduced herself as Mikko, and let me know again that it was okay that I was late, as I was taking care of myself. She was really sweet, and it was a lot of fun getting to know her. One of the first things that she told me was that she was glad to be meeting with me as she had not been assigned a conversation partner of her own. She explained to me that she really wanted one, because she wanted to improve her English. Thus, she had asked Simon if she could accompany him to his conversation meetings.

This was very interesting to me, as it made me think about the nature of our meetings. To be completely honest, I had viewed the meetings as part of a checklist- something to get done for a grade and cross off the list. However, Mikko reminded me that having a conversation partner was truly beneficial, as it helped the IEP students to learn and helped me to open my eyes. Also, Mikko's enthusiasm was an inspiration. She had gone out of her way to make sure that she had a conversation partner, despite the fact that she had not been assigned one to begin with. This was amazing to me, and definitely a lesson in determination.