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!
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