Final Meeting with Conversation Partner

For our last meeting, Francesca and I met outside of Smith yesterday afternoon. I have really enjoyed meeting with her so this was a very bitter sweet meeting. We had our usual conversation, catching up on the happenings of the past weekend. We then spoke about our Christmas plans. She said that she is having some family come into town and I told her that I was going back home. We also spoke a lot about the traditions that our family has. In particular, her family plays certain games and eats certain foods that go along with the holiday season. I also told her about my family traditions that go along with my mixed Jewish and christian heritage. We both laughed and joked about old funny stories that we had had from past Christmases.

As I mentioned, I have really enjoyed my time with Francesca. I thought it was really cool that I was able to have a conversation partner that was a girl around my age. We were able to find a lot of similarities and were able to relate a lot. It was really neat to have the opportunity to help her with her English and her transition to school in America, and I feel that she has taught me a lot as well. I plan to stay in contact with Francesca and stay up to date on how she is doing.

7th Meeting with conversation Partner

Today, I met with Francesca at the TCU bookstore. We walked around the store and picked out funny books or books with funny titles. I told her how I love going into the store Urban Outfitters because they have the funniest books. In particular, there is a book called Dancing with Jesus that I thought was really funny that I described to her. We sat down and enjoyed some coffee and got on a tangent about shopping. We talked about our favorite stores and the differences in clothing between our countries. She told me that most of the people dress a lot like Americans, especially the young people. People wear shorts and t-shirts on a day to day basis. But, she also described some of the traditional clothing of Chile. I thought that this was really neat because Americans doesn't have any traditional clothing because we all come from a diverse set of backgrounds. We googled and You tubed some of the outfits and dances that are traditional in her country. I explained to her that I found these very similar to the traditional outfits and dances of the people in Peru. Then, I showed her a video clip from Greece saying that this was the history of our culture. We both laughed about that and she commented on how she had liked that movie. We then just spoke about our weeks and talked about what we had done over the last weekend.

Class Reading 0 the wit and wisdom of Mark Twain

I thought that this reading was actually really interesting. One of my favorite sections on Pinterest is the Quote category, so this was great.... a whole book of them! There were a two sections that I liked in particular:

Courage (page49)
My favorite quote in this section was, "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear." I like this quote because I am afraid of literally everything. This made me think  of my fear of flying. I am from California, so I have to fly a good amount during the year. I have been able to sort of conquer this fear by rationalizing it away, but the fear is still there none the less.

Humor (page108)
I really liked the quote, "Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand." This made me think of the first day of this class. We spoke about laughter can be healing and how our professor would read a book of jokes when he got sick. I believe that laughter can heal all things and I think that this quote represents that belief.

6th Meeting with Conversation Partner

I met with Francesca on Monday November 26th. Because of the freezing weather, we decided to switch it up from our usual spot outside of Smith and go to potbelly for lunch. I got my usual pizza sandwich and she got a turkey and Swiss cheese sandwich.

We started off by talking about out Thanksgiving vacation. I told her about how I went home and stayed with my two older sisters. She also had a traditional thanksgiving dinner with one of her friends. She said she loved all the wonderfully yummy food that they had. We also laughed about how we had to lay on the couch for 3 days just to recoup from the massive meal. She also told me about how she went shopping on black Friday. Unfortunately, she didn't find any of the good deals she was hoping for. But, she was excited to take part of this "weird" American tradition. I got to explain  to her why they called it "black Friday." She said she now understood the name because of the thousands of people she saw out shopping at 3 in the morning.

Other than that she said she has been really busy with school and is getting a little stressed out. I could definitely relate. I told her that I was also very stressed with school and that I was nervous for finals.

Class Reading - Tales of Juha Part 2

I really enjoyed this section of the book. I commented last time that there were 1 or 2 stories in the first section that touched on social issues, but this section really brought the focus in on topics people would usually try to avoid. Although I really loved the witt in the first half of the book, I think that this piece was definitely my favorite. As a whole, I this is one of the top books we have read in the class in my opinion. I loved that the stories were short because I can't stay focused on long stories, especially if they are boring. I also enjoyed the humor in Tales of Juha compared to the humor used in the other books we have read.

There was one specific story that I really liked. This is the story on pages 48 and 49 where Juha and is son are walking down a road with the donkey. They continue to make comments and remarks about people passing whether the person rode a donkey or didn't ride a donkey. This really brought to light how judgmental people are and how there will always be people there to criticize you no matter what you do. This was highlighted when Juha says, “Let me tell you something, son. You can never please everyone.”

5th Meeting with conversation partner

I met with Francesca on Friday November 16th outside of Smith. Unfortunately, this was before Thanksgiving break so it has taken me a little while to blog about this meeting. It was a really pretty day outside which was great. During this meeting we talked a lot about school. She had a lot of questions about TCU and she shared some concerns she had about going back to school again. In Chile, she had gone to college for two years, but they stopped going and just did a little traveling. Since then, she has been taking some basic courses and working on her English so that she can go to an American college. As you may remember, I brought Francesca to my organizational management class. Although this did mitigate some of her concern and worry, she is still very nervous. She was able to get the gist of what the teacher was saying and could generally understand the subject, but she is nervous that when she has to get into an actual class where she has to earn a grade, that she wont understand enough. I was able to help her by telling her how much her English has improved already during this semester. I reminded her of our first meeting where she was excusing her self the whole time and saying that she didn't know how to say something. Now she is sounds much more confident when speaking. I did give her some advice regarding her accent. Sometimes it is a little hard to understand her through her accent when she speaks fast, so I told her to just slow down a little bit.

Other than talking about school and classes we just updated each other on the new things that have gone on in our lives since our last meeting. It was a very fun meeting and a great conversation!

Class Reading- Tales of Juha

I really liked this read. I found it a lot more interesting that the other pieces we have read because of the witty humor and the cleverness in each story. I was really surprised by the amount that I could actually relate to and I found myself wishing that I could come up with "come back" like Juha had. I also found it humorous how he was able to use his witt to get out of basically every situation.

There were a few stories that I particularly enjoyed. The first was the story of Juha and his two wives that he gave a necklace too. This story really displays his cleverness and ability to get out of predicaments. Second, I really liked the story about Juha steeling a donkey, which then got stolen. When asked how much he sold it for he replied, "at cost." Again, the way he handled the situation was really funny. I think I liked this one because I am not really a funny or witty person, so I wish I could come up with something like this right on the spot as he did. Lastly, I thought the story about Juha naming the baby racewinner was really funny. This one stood out to be because he was able to bring out a social issue that would normally never be brought up and that a topic that people would try to avoid. He also does it in a stealth and witty way and makes the others kind of pause to take it all in. I could imagine myself in that group of friends with my mouth open like, "did he just say that."

Although I found many of the stories very funny, I also didn't understand a lot of them. In particular, I didn't know what he meant when he told the story of the two women fighting. But, all in all, I enjoyed this reading.