Peter TS # 16

On Friday 5 May, I met with Umutoni for the last time. She was very sad that it was our last lesson, and at the end of it, took a picture with me and gave me a hug. We went over emotions again. When we finished that, the topic turned to shopping. I wrote down a basic question: how much does this cost. I then drew a picture of a grocery item, and wrote a price below it. I asked Umutoni how much it cost, and she didn’t seem to understand. When I said this item costs X.XX, she realized what I had asked her. I drew another picture and repeated the question, and she was able to say, ‘this item costs X.XX’. When the lesson was finished, the whole family gathered around me, and was effusive with gratitude and joy. Everyone hugged me, and as I drove off, they waved me goodbye.

Peter TS # 15

On Friday 5 May, I met with Raul for our last tutoring session. He wanted help with his pronunciation, and he brought a long list of verbs in their past, present, and future tense forms with him. He went over each word one by one, and I would correct whatever pronunciation errors he made. He had trouble with the word breakfast. I mentioned something about its etymology: how you can think of it as a compound word: break + fast. It is the morning meal, and implies that by participating in it, the eater is breaking a fast (as in abstaining from food). He found this interesting.  When the lesson was over, he gave me a card and told me he was proud that I was graduating. We plan to see each other again someday. Maybe when I go to Mexico during the summer, he will be there and we can meet up.

Peter TS # 14

On 28 April I tutored Umutoni at her family’s apartment. We worked on words that express emotion. The word for emotion in Kinyarwanda is imbamutima. I gave her the following words with their Kinyarwandan analogues: happy (ibinezaneza); sad (intimba); fear (ubwoba); anger (umujinya); worry (guhangayika); anxious (guhangayika); and scared (gutinya). When we went over a word, I would give a gesture expressing its meaning. When we were talking about sadness, I would frown, and when talking about fear, I would pretend to jump in surprise. When I said an emotion I asked her to do the same, and she did pretty well. Her sisters joined in, and it became a game. The youngest seemed to enjoy the lesson the most, and was laughing in delight whenever one of her sisters made a funny face. I left her with the list of words, and I think she had grasped most of them by the end of the lesson.

Peter TS # 13

On 21 April I tutored Umutoni at her family’s apartment. We worked on telling time again. I drew a clock on a sheet of paper like I did last time, and cut up two other sheets of paper as clock hands. One was little and the other was short. I wrote down the following: What time is it? She remembered what this meant. I tested her by making the hands of the clock point towards noon, and she said that it was twelve o’ clock. I drew more tick marks than last time, and gave her more complicated times. When I moved the short hand to the ‘one’, the big hand to 5, and when I asked her what time it was, she said that it was one o’ five. This was incorrect, but I corrected her by showing her that between the numbers 12 and 5 is 20 minutes. So it is one-twenty. She understood and was able to tell the time when the big hand was placed over a number.

Peter CP #6

On Thursday 4 May, Raul and I went to see Guardians of the Galaxy II. We went to the AMC theatre in Tallahassee. It was opening night. The movie continued the story of Peter Quill, who meets his father and is told he is half celestial. It was a good movie; Raul thought so too. He found some parts of it, when the actors talked too fast, incomprehensible, but could guess at the meaning using context clues. He had seen Guardians of the Galaxy I when it first came out, but I had seen it the night before yesterday. We talked about the southern accent of one of the main characters; he found it to be similar to what he hears around Tallahassee. He said he could understand it because he was now so used to hearing it. This is our last CP meeting, but we have another tutoring session left to go.

Jacqueline CP #6/7

5/7 2pm

Today, I spoke with Yueyang on the phone. She just recently went to NYC to visit this guy she met. I haven't been able to get too many details, since we were with a bigger group on Friday, and she didn't want to discuss it on the phone today (she'd rather discuss in person). We talked about the weekend, dating, and dating as a Christian, specifically. I'm going over her house tonight to hang out, and we plan to hangout more over summer, before she leaves. She has been very sweet, and I've enjoyed getting to know her this semester!

Jacqueline CP #5

5/5 9pm

This weekend I originally planned on having Mexican food with Yueyang, but I ended up having to work late, so we just met up for drinks after. We started at Proof with some friends, then went to the Domi Station to play a game called Secret Hitler, a social deduction game. Having drinks before playing the game was not a very good call. I was just as lost as Yueyang! Overall, we enjoyed our time together.