The first cultural workshop was held on Tuesday afternoon in the lounge of the CIES building. Kyle Kaminski spent some time explaining why we all were gathered there together and how we were going to interact with each other over the next few weeks.
We were split up into small groups of about 5. Surprisingly there were fore TEFL students than CIES students, which was fine. I was in a group with two gentlemen from Saudi Arabia and a woman from South America. We were asked to fill out a chart before attending the workshop. It was just a web of words explaining who we are. I chose some words like: yogi, climber, lover, student. Each student shared the words in their web and explained a little about who they were. I thought it was interesting that the woman from South America said she was "loud". She even commented that it was part of latin american culture. Her and her family are very expressive physically and audibly.
We then answered questions describing our country and culture. Some of those questions were: How do you say "thank you" in your language? What is a current hot topic in your country? What is/are the majority/minority religious/spiritual beliefs in your country?
Since there were three TEFL students in my group, we had similar answers to these questions considering we are all from the US, however, some of our answers varied anyway, which was interesting. For example, one student said we thank people verbally or sometimes with a "thank you" note. Another student mentioned that if the act was significant, we thank a person with food or gifts.
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