Blog Post 6

I can't believe the final weeks of the semester are already here! Only two more weeks of chat café? I'm going to be sad when it's over and I'll probably only see my other chat café members when we randomly run into each other in the diag or at the library.

Last week my chat group ended up doing some things a little differently. We watched a movie! This was something we'd talked about doing for almost the whole semester since we'd so often found ourselves talking about movies and tv. So I thought what better time than right before break to do something a little special. I also said that I would bring in some sandwiches that I thought were a pretty good example of thanksgiving fare so they could try it and then they all said they wanted to bring food too! So we ended up having sandwiches and some sweet Chinese dumplings and pudding and some Japanese fried balls (I can't remember the name but they were so good!) and cookies! We set in a class room in East Quad and projected the movie on the screen and ate and watched and of course chatted. Since we were watching a movie it was less talking than usual but I set the tone early on that it was completely acceptable to talk during the movie so we all would comment on funny parts or they would ask about something they didn't understand (like the phrase, "I'm bushed," to mean I'm tired) and I tried, maybe a little unsuccessfully to explain the deal with Kevin Bacon and the six degrees of separation thing. We watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles which was fitting since it was about getting home for Thanksgiving and I was pleasantly surprised that one of my members who comes less often and whose English is a little below the level of the other reached out to me to say how much he enjoyed the movie and to ask again what the title was.

Some final chat café thoughts:

1. The importance of going with the flow. I saw this in the final thoughts of some other people too which I think just goes to show how important it is. Don't freak out! Things will be fine. Come with some back up topics but don't feel like it's necessary to stick with them. Let conversations flow naturally because in the end I think that is a lot more enjoyable than making everything really structured. It'll help you get to know your members better too!

2. Multicultural conversations can come out of almost any topic. Remember this and use it whenever. No matter what you're talking about you can relate it back to similarities and difference between your respective cultures.

3. It's important to remember you're just a student and they're just students aka your group members are your peers! It's a lot better to treat them like friends and classmates rather than your students, because they're not! I think chat cafés work best with relationships among equals rather than creating a hierarchal relationship.