Throughout the semester both the speaker partner, Ricky, and I have both been extremely busy. Wether it has been exams, work, or family visits, it has been a struggle to get together. We were, however, able to find time to get lunch tuesday afternoon. We met at Chick Fil A to catch up and see how each others semesters were going. As I prepare to take the most important tests of the semester Ricky just finished his. Ricky aspires to go and finish his undergraduate career at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. To do this Ricky had to study and pass an english exam that says he’s prepared to enter into schooling there. This is one of the reasons Ricky hasn't been able to meet up recently. He has been studying intensely for this exam over the past few months. As he explained the exam to me I just thought how hard it would be for me to complete a similar exam in a foreign language. Writing, reading, listening, and speaking were the major parts in the exam. Taking a total of four hours, the exam seemed like a nightmare. It reminded me of SAT and ACT exams back in high school. Spending the entire day saturday to take the exam was never a fun experience. As Ricky talked about his test he seemed relatively confident that he did well on it and his hopes were high that he passed it. I was excited for him. This test was a big step in him continuing his life dream of being a missionary. In addition to discussing his test we talked about having our families in town.
Around the same time my brother visited for the K-State game Ricky’s Godfather came and visited him. He said that he was excited to see him and that he was happy he came. Like my brother Ricky’s Godfather was able to meet all of his friends that he had made at TCU. He said he was very excited to show him his church friends as well. Ricky’s Godfather is a missionary who also has the same strong faith that Ricky has. In addition to discussing our families visiting we also talked about what we did for thanksgiving. Ricky explained how he has some family west of Fort Worth that he went out and stayed with. He talked about being able to practice his driving skills for his driving test (which he also recently passed) and waking up to go hunting. I think listening to him talk about his hunting experience was the most interesting part of his thanksgiving. He explained that it was extremely weird to him to be able to get a gun so easily. In Honk Kong there are specific gun regulations that both require a lot of money and extensive paperwork to own a gun. For these reasons, he said, most people just don’t own them. In addition since Hong Kong is a city there are not many places they can go to shoot guns even if they did have them. This is why he was so excited to go hunting with his Texas family. He said that he remembers waking up at 5am and going out to the hunting post that was in a tree. Spending much of the day looking for deer to hunt he said he started to shake due to the cold weather. The day ended in a sort of unpleasant fashion because they didn't kill anything, however, Ricky said he had a great time because it was the first time he’s ever shot or held a gun. Ricky also explained how when he called and told his friends back home that he had shot a gun and passed his drivers test they were extremely jealous. They equated his life to that of a movie. Similar to guns, cars in Hong Kong are very expensive and require a lot of money to get. This is the same for drivers licenses. For this reason the majority of people just ride bikes or take public transportation. I kind of knew this too because when I went to China that majority of the people I saw either took cabs or rode bikes.
Overall it was really nice to meet up with Ricky again before the semester ended. It was good to hear that he thinks his test went well and that hes going to be able to enroll at the seminary. I think that he will do really well next semester if he is able to enroll. We made plans to catch up one more time before we both go away for winter break. We decided that we would try and get lunch next week at some point. I look forward to hearing what his results are on the English exam and how his two finals end up going.
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