Conversation #2

Today I met with my conversation partner for the second time. Surprisingly, it was actually much harder to communicate with her today than the first time we met two weeks ago. I assume this is because when we first met we were going over simple subjects such as introducing ourselves and talking about our lives. However in this second conversation, we talked about various topics that required the use of a more extensive vocabulary that my conversation partner found hard to grasp. This meant that we were spending much longer on each point of the conversation this time because I constantly found myself having to repeat sentences and trying to explain what a word or saying meant. However eventually, towards the end of the conversation, things began to flow more smoothly and the conversation progressed at a more natural pace.

My conversation partner informed me that she was not going to be around for a couple of weeks because she had to go back to Venezuela for a business trip. She told me that she was going back to sell her house and pick up her degree from a friend there. Also she told me that she was really looking forward to going back because she would get to see all of her friends back home. What I found surprising was that she was not interested in going back to the country itself, she was only interested in visiting her friends. She told me that she dislikes Venezuela because of the way the country is run and because of its government which she believes is corrupt and unhealthy for the Venezuelan people. This is why she loves living in the United States so much she says. This lead to a conversation about why she believes the United States is better than her home country.

When I asked her about the United States, she said there is so much more opportunity here, than her own country. She told me that back home 80%-90% of the population works blue-collar jobs and almost no one has a true white collar job, like the majority of workers in the United States. She also said that the school system seemed to be better and that she was happy to have her children going to school here. I asked about her children and she said that her older daughter was just entering high school. She was worried because she had no idea how the US college system worked and didn’t know how her daughter should apply for college and what she needed to do to get in. This made me realize how many unseen adjustments individuals have to make when moving to a new country. I certainly have no idea how I would apply for college in Venezuela or any other foreign country. In response to this dilemma, I told her I was not sure how individuals in the US on a visa were supposed to apply for institutions, such as universities or colleges. However, I instructed her that every high school has a college counselor who should know what steps are necessary for the application.

The difficulty in communication we encountered in this conversation makes me a little wary towards our future conversations. As the conversations progress they will invariably increase in complexity. This makes me nervous because it means that I will have to spend more time trying to make her understand what I am saying and spend less time actually speaking with and learning from her.