Post #3

Four Chat Cafes down, and still going strong!

At my third meeting, it ended up just being me and four of the international students from China and Malaysia.I think it was a really wonderful by-chance happening because it gave the students who have familiarity with Asian culture a chance discuss the direct parallels between Chinese and Malaysian cultures. This was helpful because at the fourth week I noticed there was a definite change in communication with the four Chinese/Malay students: they were talking to each other like old friends really interested in each other's lives. I think they needed the opportunity to find (extremely) similar ground in order to feel comfortable with each other.
(Also, I mentioned at my first week that I had two very shy/quiet students participate in my group, but I was proven wrong this last week! They are extremely talkative, but I guess they just needed a little more familiarity before they became as comfortable as everyone else.)

Something that struck me while reading through blog posts this week was Sophie's paragraph about over planning and back-up plans. I relate to it so well because I feel like I do the complete opposite. I come up with a focus for the hour in addition to the lunch we get (ie. card games, a jar of slips of silly "icebreaker" questions, or photos of their family), and then... I hope for the best. So far, the natural flow of conversation has always been effective in creating an organic chat cafe session and I've never had to panic about what we do next. I think if I brought a well-developed back-up plan, I would be planning to use it, and that would create too much structure in the conversations... Though my approach to back-up preparation is different from Sophie's, like her though, I minimally plan to reduce my fears and anxieties about the session.