Conversation partner #3

Vera and I haven’t been able to meet for a while. It was spring break and then we were both busy so we had a lot to talk about. She is excited to be able to enroll as a full time student in the fall.

Her English has gotten better just from our first meeting. She no longer has to think as much about what words to use and her English is flowing much better. I have read several comments about the differences in economics between other people’s conversations partner’s countries and the US. I wanted to get more in depth with Vera about this. She states that the government is just much more involved. They accept this as reality while we are constantly fighting about the level of involvement of government in business.

I asked her about the differences in the weather again and she said that she is enjoying the warmer weather. I told her about my summer after my senior year and how it was over 100 degrees for over 100 days. She looked at me like I was lying. We both realized we were using different forms of measurement. I was using Fahrenheit and she was thinking Celsius. So we spent a couple of minutes doing the conversions. This is yet another instance of the cultural and global differences that I have come to realize through this semester with my conversations with her.

I am starting to get to know Vera’s personality and that compounded with her increased English abilities has started to make our conversations much more enjoyable. It is crazy that the semester is over so fast and that our conversations will soon be at an end. We have talked about maybe continuing our conversations next semester.  Vera wants to do this for her English skills and I enjoy our conversations to learn about China and their culture.