People

Originally Written July 12, 2011

So, I haven’t written that much lately, but I’ve been having issues with the internet lately so its been hard to upload.

So…People. I have met people from all over here. In my class, I have people from Brazil, Italy, Japan, Ecuador, India, South Korea, Thailand, Russia, and of course other Americans in my class. On top of that, I’ve met people from Hong Kong, Morocco, UK, Ireland, and Spain. As well as many, many French people.

Its weird being in class with people whose first language isn’t English, or even people who natively speak a language that doesn’t use the roman alphabet. I had a mind boggling moment when I realized that French is probably so much easier for us to learn because of all of the cognates and even the similarities in the word order. In spite of this, everyone in my class that is from a non-european country seems to speak at least three languages (including French). One of the women from Japan is learning French (obviously) but she’s also teaching herself English while she’s here. The catch? She’s teaching herself using a book that is in French. For French speakers. That would be like me trying to learn Chinese from a book that was in French. I really don’t think that I could do that!!

I love my teachers, as well. They’re young and informal and so stylish! One of them, Charlene, reminds me hardcore of Mrs. Acton - they have the same enthusiasm and ways of holding themselves. She even kind of looks a little like Mrs. Acton. My other teacher, Isiane, teaches mainly grammer during the morning, and then I have Charlene in the afternoon. With Charlene, we do practical applications of what we learned in the morning, normally acting things out or creative writing.

On Fridays, we only have class in the morning, and this past Friday we had to meet in the Centre Ville. Our task was to pair up (preferably with someone from another country) and walk around asking people what they thought of our country. I partnered with Kim, who is a very very tall South Korean in his late twenties or thirties. While it was obviously eye opening to ask people what they thought about the United States, it was just as interesting to walk around with Kim and hear what people thought about his country.

Most of the time, people tended to lump South and North Korea together and would say that they thought negatively of the politics in the country. Conversely, they thought of Koreans as hardworking and the country in general as very technology oriented.

Americans on the other hand…actually didn’t fare that badly. Here’s a summary of what I was told:

~ Americans are very friendly, respectful and outgoing

~Positive words that come to mind when thinking of America are big, Barack, “hi”, “thank you”, spirit, initiative, beautiful history ( I didn’t understand that one, but whatevs I’ll take it), the dollar, and confusing.Someone also mentioned the New York, New York” song by Frank Sinatra.

~Negative aspects of America focused on our politics, economy, justice system, George Bush, and Americans feeling entitled. When I asked one woman to describe the typical American she said “always negative”.

~One man, who had lived in Miami for a while, actually said that he preferred the American mentality of doing business to the French one. He said he liked the open market system and that American businesses would go out of their way to help the customer.

~Another man said that he loved the American Dream - how anyone can become a millionaire. I told him that many Americans think that the American Dream is dead, and he replied that in Europe everyone thinks that its very much alive.

It was such a good experience, walking around like that! I am so glad that we got to do it :)