On Wednesday evening, a couple of us joined an English as a Foreign Language class. There, about twenty students practiced conversational English with us. We talked about people's names, their families, how old their children are, how long they've lived in Athens, etc. I was very impressed, because most of them had only been studying English for about three or so months, but they were still able to carry on conversations with us.
We were asked a lot of questions about what it's like to live in America/Texas, and we also learned a lot about what it's like to live as an Albanian in Greece.
They were surprised at how young we were. A couple of guys were shocked that I am not far from graduating at only twenty years old. Many of them seemed surprised when Emma and Jase shared that they're getting married soon, even though they're only twenty one.
They asked us why we only know one language. The best answer we could give was that it's not a necessity in America to know more than just the one language. Part of the reason is that even if there are people from other countries and languages, they generally have to know English to make it in America. This is a foreign concept to the Albanian people because knowing multiple languages is a necessity for survival for them.
They also asked us about traditional songs we had. Unfortunately, we couldn't really think of many, so we shared our school song and national anthem. They also shared their national (Albanian) and them and some traditional songs of their culture. The songs were very upbeat and fun, and I enjoyed it a lot. It was very cool to hear about the deep, rich culture of the Albanian people and learn about some of our differences.
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