Alexander Miguel TS#15

 Today I met with Maryna for our last session. We spent the entire session of two hours in conversation practice. She was a little bit frazzled on her way to the session, because she was trying to find military gear for her upcoming trip to Ukraine. She needed to find thermal-imaging goggles, boots and a helmet. Even though her home city of Zhytomyr is far from the front line, occasional missile strikes require extra protection. 

Much of our conversation concerned differences in cultural attitudes between Ukraine and America. One of the big points of difference was the treatment of alcohol and tobacco. I explained to Maryna the American origins of present-day drinking age laws, based in Prohibition and Puritan culture. The concept of a drinking age is very different in Ukraine. While there are laws on the books against underage drinking, Maryna was telling me that a child can walk into a liquor store, buy a bottle of vodka, tell the clerk that "it's for his parents", place it in a black bag, then walk out without further questioning. I was also explaining the greater cultural trends in America to slowly ban tobacco products, which did not make sense to Maryna. Her mindset was that politicians should not ban anything that does not directly harm other people. 

Overall, I enjoyed tutoring Maryna. Her competencies are very high, and aside from occasional hiccoughs in complex verb construction, her command of grammar is very high. She was telling me that she needs to take the TOEFL in order to start pharmaceutical school, and I think that with a few more months of practice she will be ready. It was also interesting to diagnose certain mistakes and idiosyncrasies of her speech as someone who studied Ukrainian briefly. For instance, on this session, she said, "I think yes" instead of "I think so". In Ukrainian the word "tak" means both "yes" and "so". 

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