After spending the weekend imploring friends to explain football to me and then spending hours sifting through youtube's generally unhelpful 'football for dummies' videos, I made my way to my second chat cafe meeting.
The first week had gone amazingly well and I was excited to see my group again. At the end of the last meeting I had asked if there were any topics they had wanted to talk about in particular and one of them was the rules of American Football. So there we were, the five of us circled around a table in the East Quad cafe with a rudimentary drawing of a football field in front of us, and me, explaining a game I only had the slightest handle on. I was pleased how engaged and genuinely interested they seemed with the topic, asking many questions, some of which I suspect I may have answered incorrectly. (How many point do you receive for a field goal? My group and I may never know for sure.)
From there we went on to talk about reality television (they were all very interested in the premise of Jersey Shore), Northern Michigan and whether there was a difference between Community Service and Volunteering in the English. (The jury is still out on that one.) We had one new member, one member who came last week but couldn't this week and one illusive member who remains at large, yet to be seen. Our new member was a grad student who had just come to the United States one year ago. His grasp on English was a little below the other girls, but it didn't stop him from participating and a few times when he didn't understand something another girl acted as a translator for him. I thought this was really nice and helpful of her, and he seemed to really appreciate it! For the most part he was fine, but I think some new vocabulary was learned, like chainsaw and massacre (yes, we were talking about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie...)
There wasn't only new vocab for him but for several group members during our conversation. The sheet of paper that I had been diagramming football on became a place where they were asking me to write out certain words they hadn't hear of or wanted spelled. At the end one of the girls took the sheet with her and another took a picture of it. I think that it was really helpful and I think I might always keep a sheet out now because it seemed to be really helpful!
We've decided next week to meet at Noodles and Company since our meeting time is close to dinner. So far the group is going really well and we are able to sustain conversation well enough by our selves that I'm not sure I'll even plan a topic for next week! I'm sure being at a restaurant will be enough to get us started.
No comments:
Post a Comment