10 Oct 2015
For this TalkAbroad conversation I was not nearly as worried about being able to speak for the thirty minutes. That made it a lot better. This time I had an idea of what to expect and ways to make the conversation continue longer without having to pause to think of ways to say. I really enjoyed the conversation and learned many new things that I did not know about Costa Rica. I believe that my second conversation was way better than my first one where I had to pause more times to think what to say or ask next.
My partner Francisco was from Costa Rica in a city that is close to the capital. He said that there are three different groups of people in Costa Rica and that there is now a mix between the three. These groups get along well with each other. Also, he described how each group of people arrived in Costa Rica. Then he told me about how this led to the physical appearances of the people that are based on the three groups of people and how they mixed together throughout the history of Costa Rica.
Francisco was very helpful and gave great answers by elaborating on each one to explain it. Also, I could tell that I picked up on the vocabulary that he was using because he didn’t have to try and work around specific words as much. He was easy to understand and I picked up on his accent from the beginning. The language did not break down hardly at all because my partner did a great job of going further on specific answers to my questions. This gave me a little longer time to think about my answers which helped keep the conversation going. I want to be able to have a conversation in Spanish like I do in English without thinking what I’m trying to say first. I believe practicing will help me achieve this because exposure can really be beneficial.
After we finished the questions for the assignment we talked about other topics such as different restaurants that are in his city and in mine. These are the same that are in my city which was really interesting. I thought there may be a McDonald’s, but there is also a KFC and Wendy’s. They serve many similar foods such as hamburgers which I found really interesting because many countries may have the same restaurants name but completely different food. I enjoyed the conversation and feel confident that it was better than the first.