Blog 6

A lot has happened in the past couple of weeks in regards to conversation circles. I held two sessions where only one participant came (very new for me) and I was able to visit Emma's where unfortunately no one showed up, but her and I had a love conversation about family and the future and the like. And even though I have this idea that I'm supposed to be bummed that attendance has been lacking, I'm not. And I think part of that is because I get it - the semester is slowly taking over each of us. But also because I think the last two conversations with Xin last week and Kyle this week were the most natural and enjoyable conversations I've had all semester. And a lot of that is me. I definitely relied a lot on having a structure to fall back on that a sort of natural flow may not have had the space to grow. In addition, I'm definitely more comfortable and engaged in a conversation with just me and another person.

I've been thinking a lot about whether or not I want to be a facilitator again. And for the longest time, I was thinking it wasn't for me. Having to come up with something every week was one more thing that I needed to think about and it constantly got back-burnered. I don't want to do that again because it doesn't feel productive or valuable for any of us.

But on Tuesday sometime between talking about Thanksgiving, Festivals in Taiwan, and whether or not her should take 125 or take a multi-lingual writers class first he asked me if I was going to do this again. I told him I wasn't sure, that it'd depend on how the credits fell. And he said, if you do it again, I'll definitely do it again.

It's a warming thought - and as we were sitting there talking about English teachers and German teachers I had a strong desire to be one again. If this is what it's like, I thought, I would love to do it again.

I still haven't decided, but what I know I'd like to do, formally or not, is to invite my participants back next semester and see if they want to take an hour, half hour out of their week, or every once in awhile to talk and catch up. Right now that feels like a good compromise.