Conversation #3

I met with my conversation partner for the third time today. We had not met in a while because  she had gone back to Venezuela for two weeks to sell her house and do a few other things so she could focus full time on living in America. Naturally I asked her how it was returning to her home country for the first time in a couple of years.

When I asked her how it was to return to Venezuela, Peggy responded with a mixed reaction. On one hand, she said that it was good to be back in a familiar place surrounded by people she knows and loves. But on the other, going back was an eye opening experience for her. She said it made her realize how lucky she was to be living in the United States now instead of Venezuela. While she loves her home country, she is disappointed in the government and the many problems it has caused. She told me about the political turmoil in Venezuela surrounding the upcoming election. Apparently in October, Venezuela is holding its six year presidential election. Since 1999, Hugo Chávez has been the president of Venezuela but, in the last election there was much speculation about the legitimacy of the outcome. My conversation partner says that right now feels a lot like it did back then. She said that most people are excited and hopeful that they have enough support to elect a new president. However they are also wary that the election might be rigged so that the majority vote does not count. This was shocking to me. I couldn’t imagine living in a country where I was distrustful of my government on some of the most basic levels, such as the integrity of an election. Trying to change the subject to a more lighthearted one I asked her what she enjoyed about going back.

The best thing she said about returning to Venezuela was getting to see her friends again. She told me that for the two years she has lived in the US she has hardly made any friends because of the language barrier. Going home, she said, was a blessing because she got to see all her friends and rekindle many of her relationships. I imagine it is comparable to going home for summer after your first year at college. She told me that she frequently kept up many of her relationships back home over the phone but, there was no substitute for actually seeing and visiting the individuals in person. This is something I felt I could completely relate to. After hearing all of this I asked her if she had ever used Skype to talk to her friends back home. Surprisingly to me, she said she had never heard of it. I spent the last ten minutes of our conversation trying to describe to her what Skype is and how she could use it to communicate with her friends back home. In the end, I think I was able to get the message through to her and she seemed rather excited about it. However, I’m still not sure if she was able to figure out how to use it. I plan to ask her about it during our next conversation and hope it will help her reconnect with her friends back home.