Location: Colonial Drive, Midtown
It was a pretty good turnout for Sunday Rhythm here in Midtown. Here was the set up: In addition to my classmates, we had American dialects from LA (los Angeles, not Lower Alabama!), Chicago, Omaha, Daytona Beach, Appalachia, Orlando, Miami, & Trinidad. CPs got a listening workout to be sure. As per normal about half of the CPs didn't show but we had 5. They were probably over worked 'cause we were talking their ears off. We covered a lot of conversational ground and I have to say Sunday Rhythm on Colonial Drive was without a doubt culturally rich yesterday! Two of the non-classmate American guests were TEFL trained. One had taught in China, the other in Rwanda. Our CPs could talk with two published writers, one published poet, three working musicians, one English professor, one on air radio personality, and the Dean from FAMU's School of Journalism. Welcome to America boys and girls!
We had some worthy conversations about their future - CP from the Punjab (the city of Jalandar, I think, but I don't remember for sure) will be studying to become a Mechanical Engineer. His father, who is probably my age or a little bit younger, visited the States for awhile back in the 1970s. He seemed to dig it and wanted his son to experience it too.
We got to converse with a future psychology major from China, a future Petroleum Engineer from Yemen who is also a singer and wants to pursue a career in music, at least on some casual level in the future. He & I got to exchange views on parents wanting us to choose "responsible careers" over pursuits of the soul. He likes Country music. I don't know why this was surprising to me but it was! They've heard of Merle Haggard in Yemen! Who knew?!? We parted with a promise that if he wanted to perform at a local open mic night here in town, I'd set him up & my band will back him.
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