TP10

 On Sunday, Feb. 24th, I met Mahdi at his apartment to help him prepare for taking the IELTS again (he took it in Tampa the previous weekend but jokingly suggested his score was probably a 2; while in reality it may be closer to 4 or 5, he needs a 5.5 to satisfy the requirements of his scholarship from Kuwait, so it seems he has some progress to make). We studied for quite a while from an IELTS prep book that he bought online, mostly covering how to devise information from graphs and put it into words. Some of these questions seemed tough even for a native speaker, but after a while I began to understand the kind of information they are trying to get English learners to extrapolate from such graphs.

 After working hard for what seemed like 2 hours but was probably closer to 45 minutes of actual English practice, we decided to call it a day. I hung out with him and his friends for more than an hour after we were done, in another apartment at Plantation belonging to a Kuwaiti CIES student. They are incredibly gracious hosts, and it was rad getting destroyed in FIFA '13 by some guys I could only communicate with in gestures, grunts and facial expressions. Next time I'm bringing my A-game and I will show them the true soccer prowess of America!!! (joke)