NALC- 3 and 4

Yesterday I went to NALC for my third and forth sessions. This time I really felt more comfortable and confident than I did last time. Especially, I was excited to find out that both of my students were internationals. I have had a lot of opportunities to travel and teach English in Asia and Central America and I so I love getting meet internationals.

My first student was a female from Central America. She showed up about 10 minutes late and apologized over and over to me and I could tell she was extremely upset that she was late. I of course, told her it was no problem, but she just kept apologizing to me. I feel like it was something cultural- that she should never keep a teacher waiting or something along those line- because she made a comment about that as well. Alas, we finally progressed in our study. We spent a lot of time talking about vocab works that show possession. For example, MY pen, YOUR pen, HER pen, THEIR pen. I never realized how difficult that can be to explain to someone. My other experiences teaching English have been primarily teaching voacb works so grammar and sentence structures where hard to figure out how to communicate. I think that she finally understood though at that end. After that, we spent time just talking. She said that needed practice just having daily conversations- so we did! She really loves talking about Church and God so that was the topic of our conversation. We really connected and I hope I have the chance to meet with her again. At the end of our meeting she said, "God bless your soul...God bless your soul....!"

Next I meet with a gentleman from Japan who works at Vanderbilt. I almost felt strange to be tutoring such a smart man. In Japan he worked as a liver surgeon- and now he is working at Vanderbilt doing research. To be honest, I know that in Japan, the male culture is to be honored and respected and so I was trying to find ways to show him a lot of respect and honor during our process, for example, by telling him how great he was doing and and asking about his family. He was really shy at first- but once I asked him about his family he opened up so much. He told me that his family just arrived from Japan after he has been living in Nashville for 2 months without them. He stated that his wife made him fly home to Japan to ride back to America with her and their two boys because she was too afraid to take care of two boys on a plane by herself. So, he traveled to Japan literally over the weekend last week. He said he was exhausted but he would do it again just to have his family here in Nashville with him (awwww!). One thing that was real funny (he even admitted it) is that he has trouble saying words with the sound "L", such as "liver". For him, being a liver doctor, this was really funny for him. He said, "the most important word I need to know in America and I cannot really say it right." So, we practiced that word a lot.

Over all, I was so pleased to get to know both of those students. I love getting to meet people from other cultures and parts of the world.