Kim CP #2

I had my first meeting with my new conversation partner on Monday, April 10 at 10 am. I haven't had very good luck with my assigned conversation partners through CIES, so I was pretty excited to be paired with Dojun for conversations through Skype. Dojun lives in Seoul, South Korea and is a friend of Professor Kim's sibling. It was really easy to talk to Dojun and I found our first meeting to be more akin to two old friends catching up rather than two strangers meeting for the first time. We talked a lot about Dojun's job at a local Korean airline company and this led to a really nice and natural conversation on traveling, culture, and food. Dojun's English speaking skills are very good and he only mispronounced a couple of words. While speaking of a past event, he said 'can' but quickly corrected himself and said 'could.' The only other mistake he made was in discussion about the nuclear spills in Fukushima, Japan when he said the spill had 'infected' many people and I corrected him and said 'effected.' He quickly recognized his mistake and was appreciative of my correction. I was a bit nervous about speaking with Dojun via Skype but our interaction felt very comfortable, not forced at all, and was actually very enjoyable. It was really nice to get to know him and I look forward to our next meeting on Friday evening.