In this meeting, we concentrated on words associated with various sections of the house, like kitchen, the living room etc. Alijon learnt the Spanish words to these, and we three (Andrea, Lucia, and I) learnt to say them in Persian. We had a discussion on traditional meals also and enquired whether it is common in Tajikistan to have an afternoon snack. The conversation went on, and we used Spanish, Persian, and English.
One of the things that I found interesting this time was that the first meetings were more relaxed and spontaneous than the others. We could communicate openly about our experience in Erasmus in Tampere, how we live our everyday life here, what trips we have been doing. Discussion of these personal matters made the discussion more involving and assisted us to communicate more. I have understood that the cultural learning occurs practically unconsciously through basic conversations like this one. As an illustration, I was also not aware that traveling around Tajikistan might be so difficult, and it was interesting to learn about it with a personal experience of a person who lives in the country.
A minor obstacle was remembering the words in Persian, which is very different from Spanish and English. We began to plan what to do in the future too, including getting together again and baking a cake. This is not in our initial intention, but I believe that it is a demonstration of how our meetings are taking a new shape, where they are not only about learning words, but also about developing friendship and getting to know each other about our cultures in a more natural manner. This meeting assisted me in enhancing speaking and listening skills in English and learning some words in Persian, as well as provided me with new information about cultural habits and the life in another part of the world day by day. I came out of the meeting more receptive and encouraged to continue learning with such interactions.
Comments