Hayley CP#1

I met with Talal who is from Kuwait. He has been here for seven months but had never met with a conversation partner before. I figured since we were just meeting each other we could go to Atomic Coffee and have a drink. This turned out pretty well since we had a lot to talk to about. He really enjoyed talking about his country which was interesting because I know next to nothing about Kuwait. From what he said, it seems like the government gives the people a lot of support which is very different from the US. Here, government support means that you are in need of disability or unemployment checks but there it is normal for the government to give you money to build a house or a farm. The government will even pay something like $100 dollars a month per child to the parents in order to encourage large families!

He also talked about things that were a culture shock for him when he arrived. He didn’t know very much English when he first came and he said he didn’t like CIES because it was so challenging for him (Don’t worry Mrs. Kim, he has since learned more and he loves it now!) He was also shocked by males and females being able to interact here. He kept asking me basically how he could talk to girls and how that “works”. This was honestly a difficult question for me to answer because the whole idea of genders mixing seems so normal. I really like how the experience is teaching me not only about other cultures, but allowing me to analyze our own culture which is just as important.