Recently I met with my conversation partner Janaina again for lunch. It was so nice to catch up with her on how her semester has been. She spoke very excitedly about how much she was learning about the English language, and on how much more difficult it was to learn than she had expected. Raising a family and living outside of Fort Worth makes it often hard to find enough time to get all the work done. I am amazed at how much her control of the language has improved just over this semester. Her writing skills have also rapidly improved, which I have noticed from her emails. English is so difficult to learn and I applaud all of her work to conquer it.
At lunch we just talked about life and school. Janaina was very interested in both this class and my nursing classes and how the nursing school worked. She is always interested in my life at TCU and how my week has been going whenever we meet, and this time was no different. We talked about what I did for Thanksgiving and about my home in California. She remarked that she has never been to the west coast but its on her list of places to visit soon. I insisted that she has to go to San Francisco when she does go, because it is one of my favorite cities in the entire world. Listening to me talk about California Janaina asked why I decided to leave and if I ever will move back. Whether I will go back is the million dollar question with my family, and honestly I have no idea.
Janaina and her family will be staying in Texas for the holidays this year and it will be their first Christmas in America. She explained some of her favorite holiday traditions and shared some of mine. Some of them were actually pretty similar, although her family's holiday food sounds much more exciting! I can't wait to hear how their Texas Christmas goes and how it compares to their Christmases in Brazil.
Our conversations are unfortunately usually brief because of our extremely busy and differing schedules, but the little time that Janaina and I do get to have together are always thoroughly enjoyable. I look forward to many more to come.
I also have relatively brief meetings with my conversation partner, since we are both so busy! But I've also really enjoyed my time I've spent with her. It is interesting that you got to talk to her about your home town and the question came up about whether you will ever move back, because this is something my conversation partner and I have talked about in the past as well. I am always talking about my hometown, and how much I miss being in the North in general. It's not that I dislike Texas, it's just that it is so different here than it is where I grew up in Chicago! Even though I'm not sure where my future will take me, I know that it will always be an adventure, and I definitely look forward to that! Another thing I have enjoyed about meeting with my conversation partner is watching her english improve. She has come such a long way in the past few months that I've known her and I can tell that she is becoming more confident in using the English language. I hope that I've been able to help her, and that she gets as much out of the conversation as I do!
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