First meeting of Summer Conversation Group

This Summer I am part of Project "Shine" through my college. It's an inservice learning assignment for my Intercultural Communication class. I've been going to Franklin Learning Center to tutor immigrants in ESL. I've been helping people with their English since the beginning of June. Mainly working one-on-one. Last week I submitted a proposal for a Summer Conversation Group. My initial idea was to do a Theatre Group to give people opportunity to express themselves in another language, to USE English in a certain context. But then I realized that would be too ambitious, especially since it would be my first interaction with a group of immigrants, all of them Somalian women. So I changed it to conversation group called "My story, your story, our story". Today it was the first meeting. Even though I am used to a "class" setting, I was a little nervous. It's been a long time that I don't teach English. I could see how some of them were really shy at the beginning, but in the course of 2 hours we all felt more comfortable. The meeting or "class" was very positive and most women expressed an interest to come back the following Wednesday.