Lauren CP#3

Yesterday I met Maria in the lounge of the CIES building to catch up a little. She brought her tablet and brought up many pictures of her hometown and their traditional dances and clothing style. We talked about the approaching finals week and she explained to me that she is pretty worried about all of her upcoming exams. In addition to the exams she has to take here at FSU with CIES she will also have a set of exams to study for as soon as she returns home.

She also told me quite a bit about a presentation she had coming up. I’m pretty sure that it is in a speaking class and is a debate done in groups. Her group has three people and they have three main points to argue. Maria told me that although she believes smoking should be banned everywhere, she has to argue the exact opposite. I explained to her that as far as debating goes, I thought that she had the easier position to argue. Her points were pretty interesting. Her first point was that public places should be public. Her second point explained that there is not, in fact, that much research done about second hand smoke inhaled from public places (most research is only done on people who live with smokers and are around it every day). Maria’s last point explained that there are other things that can be harmful to one’s health and we do not do anything to fight this (for example, the chemicals and smoke released from cars).

I was really impressed with her group’s arguments. I thought that the arguments were really well supported and even seemed like something a native speaker would come up with. Also, even though didn’t agree with the point she had to argue, she seemed very impressed to do so. Because of the fact that we had not been able to get together that much because of conflicting schedules, I persuaded her to meet me again that afternoon for dinner.