Today I met up with Toshie again. Usually before we begin we chit chat a little about our weekends. She took her daughter to Panama City beach over the weekend and told me all about it. We ended up taking a classroom to ourselves because we needed silence for our listening activity.
I picked out a lecture about John Adams' life. Before we met up I listened to it on my headphones at home. As soon as I had it playing on the speakers on my laptop the audio clip seemed too fuzzy. The fuzziness of this clip made it more difficult to understand but Toshie was a real trooper. She seemed to absorb a lot of information because she answered most of the questions correctly.
After the listening practice Toshie brought me an article she was assigned. I became a little uncomfortable with the subject matter. Luckily, Toshie and I have developed a friendship and I don't feel awkward around her. The article was about the ancient Greeks and briefly talked bout their sexuality. Most of my explanations had to do with the passages talking about the homosexuality in the ancient Greek communities and even talked about orgies. I was pretty shocked that she had this article but we are both adults and were very mature about it.
Toshie is a very hip and cosmopolitan woman so I didn't feel uncomfortable explaining these things to her but what should I have done if she was a Muslim student? I'm not sure where the line is drawn with cultural sensitivity.
After we went over the article Toshie told me she had a friend who would like to join us for our meetings. I told her that was fine since most of our practices were listening so the more the merrier. I also asked her if she would come with her daughter to see my cultural presentation. Unfortunately, this is at the same time as the CIES international dinner party.
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