Gabe - CP #3 (Aziz)

 Aziz and I met at the Starbucks on Tennessee closest to the CIES building. This isn't the first time I've met Aziz, however, as he's been present many times during my tutoring sessions with Masoud. This is the first time that we've officially met as conversation partners. We had a pretty long conversation about nothing in particular. Some of the things we talked about were the differences between Kuwait/Saudi Arabia and the U.S. In particular, we talked about how different wedding ceremonies are. For weddings in the Middle East, they hold separate ceremonies for the men and the women, and these ceremonies take place at the same time. I was telling Aziz how different this was from most western weddings, where everyone celebrates together. We also talked about why he came here and why he wants to learn English. He got a scholarship to study for a Masters in Sports Management and wanted to learn English in order to gain admission to FSU. He was recently accepted and will attend FSU starting in the spring. He intends to get his Master's and then go back to Kuwait. I asked him why he didn't just get his Master's in Kuwait and he told me that there aren't any programs for sports management there and also knowing English gives you access to better jobs. Some other things we talked about were embarrassing mistakes he had made in English, places we had travelled, and various English words of which he wasn't sure of the meaning or pronunciation.

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