Meeting my conversation partner for the first time!

Meeting my conversation partner for the first time!

On Monday September 28, my conversation partner- Palmira Cumbo - and I joined Mark and his conversation partner, Eduardo Chacon for dinner at Market Square.  Palmira is a beautiful, twenty-year-old girl from Angola and Eduardo is a twenty-six year old man from Venezuela. We sat in a small round table at the back of BLUU, allowing us to hear one another clearly. “It’s going to be fascinating.” – I think. After all, how many college students have the opportunity to have a real conversation with friends from Africa, South America, and North America at the same time?” (I’m Vietnamese).

My first impression of Palmira was that she had pretty hair and was quite shy. We hugged and I asked about her experience at TCU so far. Palmira said she was enjoying living in the States in general and being a part of the Intensive English program in particular. She is living off-campus with a friend who drove her to the BLUU so that we could meet. I appreciated her effort to meet with me and glad that she had good friends to help her. Palmira expressed her wish to stay in the States. This was where I began to ask her more about her country because I knew a lot of foreigners wanted to stay in a country after living there for a while because that country’s environment is much better than that back home. From Palmira’s story, I learned that it is very difficult to bring a lot of money out of Angola because of the government’s policy. Besides some light coverage on politics, Palmira and Eduardo both told me that studying here is so stressful because there were a lot of homework, unlike in their home countries where the teachers didn’t give much homework.

After talking about her country and culture for a while, I realized that her shyness is not a dominant characteristics of her personality.  She is a sweet, friendly girl who anyone would want to be friends with. Her shyness actually roots from her current inability to communicate in English in full proficiency. Compared to Eduardo whose English is at advanced level, Palmira’s English is at inter-mediate level. It is very brave of Palmira to come to the United States to study English and to challenge herself. As a non-native speaker myself, I can imagine all the struggles I would have experience if I couldn’t communicate clearly and effectively. In the US culture where individualization is stressed upon, the ability to show who you are and confidence are the keys to success in most circumstances.  If you can’t talk well and fast enough, people won’t have the patience to listen to your stories, no matter how deep your thoughts are or how smart you actually are. This is why some international students I know, even though being very smart, often receives Cs in classes because of their inability to illustrate what they understand. If they could solve the same homework problem in their own language, their grades would have been much higher. However, I think foreign students have to accept all possible challenges once they study abroad, and there is no excuses if foreign students don’t make effort to catch up with the native speaker’s standard because of the language.

A large part of our conversation revolved around Palmira and Eduardo’s future plans after they are done with the IEP. Eduardo will go to medical school in Chicago for his master’s degree. Palmira plans to apply to Collin College in Plano, Texas. When I told her that I knew another IEP girl whom I met at camp also wanted to go to Collin College, Palmira explained that Collin College is not only possible for her to get into but also affordable . As much as she wanted to study at TCU, TCU’s tuition was too high without scholarship.

After a while, Mark had to leave for work, and the rest of us stayed to talk for another thirty minutes. I shared with Palmira from my personal knowledge and experience, the types of scholarship students can get at TCU, types that she is eligible for, and the process to apply for scholarship and financial aids.

Our first conversation was interesting. Not only did I learned more about Palmira, her dreams and goals but I also had the chance to get to know Mark and Eduardo better. Palmira is so sweet and genuine, and I can’t wait until the day she can expressed herself better so that many other people can see her beautiful soul. Eduardo is so active, open-minded, and straightforward with his opinions. In the future, may ask for his advice on getting a driver license and buying cars. Last but not least, I am glad I joined Mark that day because Mark and I had two class together but we never really had the chance to know each other until then.