Last Meeting with Thania

            Thania and I switched it up for our last meeting and met at Barnes and Noble for our last meeting. We had a great conversation over coffee for the last time. For this conversation, we talked about a wide range of topics. Because Thania was working on her final essay for her writing clatss, we discussed that. Her essay was about a paragraph long, and I was thoroughly impressed with her writing. The topic of the essay was "who is the most important political figure in your country?" Thania was torn at first about what to write about. She has been living in the United States for over 15 years, and is a full US citizen and consider the United States her home. But she figured that the teacher wanted her to write about where she is originally from, Guatemala. So for the essay, she wrote about Rigoberta Menchu Tum, a Guatemalan famous for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Rigoberta is famous for her equal rights with the indigenous people.
           Despite Thania writing about Rigoberta, she actually isn't a huge fan of her. She loves what she does regarding equal rights with the Mayan people, but Thania claims that Rigoberta is sort of a communist politically. This kind of brought the conversation to a discussion on the state of Guatemala and its future. Thania says right now that Guatemala is very dangerous because of being so close to Colombia and Mexico. The people in charge of the drug rings in Guatemala used to be kind and gracious to the community. But then the Mexican cartels came in and massacred all the existing drug leaders, and replaced them with their own men. Now she says Guatemala is dangerous, and people are nervous that they might not be able to go to the grocery store and back and surviving. This is especially tough for Thania because the majority of her family is living there still.
         We eventually came to the topic of politics in the United States. Thania is fairly conservative when it comes to politics, however she doesn't like how the parties are so against each other. In the past election, she voted for Obama. She actually thought I was from Ohio and became a little angry when I told her I didn't get my absentee vote in time. She was relieved when I let her know I was from Nebraska.
          At this point, we had been talking for over an hour and it was time to go. I really enjoyed this conversation because I learned a lot about Thania's culture and her views. Our meetings were always entertaining, and I am thankful I had such a enthusiastic partner.

Una compañera nueva?

        Thania and I met again for my 7th overall meeting this past Tuesday. Out of all of my meetings so far this semester, this was by far the most interesting. Originally, Thania and I had planned on going over her essays for her English class. Instead, Thania and I ate lunch with another student in the program, Monica. When I first saw Monica, I had no idea she was in the ESL program, considering she's about 55 years old with blonde hair and light complexion. It turns out, she can  barely speak English. Monica is in the beginner level of all her English classes at TCU. So, instead of Thania and I speaking English, all 3 of us spoke Spanish for an hour. Luckiliy, I know Spanish well enough to communicate decently with Monica. I learned a lot about Monica during this conversation. She is from Venezuela and moved to the United States 4 years ago. She has a son that is a Junior Computer Science major here at TCU as well, and they live just a few blocks away from TCU.
        Because this entire conversation was primarily in Spanish, I didn't really get to ask a ton of questions regarding substance. Most of the conversation was me telling Monica about myself like that I'm a biology major with chemistry and spanish minors. She was very intrigued with my aspirations to go to dental school after TCU, and Monica was shocked that dental school was an additional 3-4 years post grad. In Venezuela, dental school programs are 5 years total of undergraduate plus post grad, and medical schools are 8 years total. She was still impressed with me wanting to be a dentist, and told a story about how expensive it was for her son to get his wisdom teeth pulled.
       At this point, they needed to get back to their homes, so I told Monica and Thania 'adios' and thanked them for the good Spanish conversation practice!

Another meeting with Thania (6th Overall)

           The other day, Thania and I met again for lunch at Market Square. Due to her class schedule and duties at home like taking care of her kids, usually we are only able to meet at 1 o clock at Market Square. This is fine with me considering I have 25 meal swipes left to burn at the Bluu. This time, we began talking about the ESL program at TCU, and Thania actually introduced me to the assistant director, Kristin. Thania, having lived in the US for over 15 years, has gone through several intensive English language programs in California and Nevada. The one at TCU is by far her favorite. She is always raving about the teachers and how intelligent they really are. Right now she is about to graduate from level 5 in speaking, but she's still working on level 3 and 4 in writing and reading. She believes she still has a few quarters left in the program before graduating completely. Writing appears to be her most difficult subject because she has trouble focusing on one idea and instead tends to circle around various information. This was easy for me to relate to because writing tends to be one of my weaker subjects. However, she still wants my help, and she plans on bringing in a few of her essays next time we meet to see if I can proofread them for her. I'm looking forward to this because I'm interested in what type of essays they assign in her writing class. When speaking to her, it's obvious that she's a fairly advanced in English. I rarely don't understand what she's saying, and when she speaks a little too fast, I try to help her with the pronunciation.

        The next topic of conversation was Thanksgiving. I was intrigued if she celebrated the holiday like most Americans. Thania loves Thanksgiving, but she has yet to master the cooking of a turkey. This wasn't a problem for her because her family and two other Hispanic families met at her neighbor's house for dinner. Luckily, her neighbor took charge of perfecting the turkey. I really enjoyed this conversation because I got to learn about Thania's family. Her husband and Thania have started a small computer science business, and her husband even has his security clearance from the federal government! He often consults at schools like John Hopkins and Columbia. I then asked her about what language is predominantly spoken around the house. Both her children mostly speak English, but she's trying to get them to learn Spanish as well. The daughter is open to that idea and speaks fairly well, but the son doesn't want to learn Spanish as much. Thania says that's because he's so used to speaking English in school.

          We then got onto the topic of her returning to Guatemala twice a year. She hasn't taken her kids back to Guatemala to see the majority of her family due to vaccinations. However, Thania still returns twice a year, and even showed me a "Quetzal," the form of currency in Guatemala. She actually gave me two quetzals, one being a coin and one being a pill. Here's a photo of the bill from google:

I really thought it was cool that she's so enthusiastic about our meetings and gave me the two pieces of Guatemalan culture, even though it's roughly worth 30 American cents!