Conversation 3

For my third conversation with Giovanka, we met at Union Grounds for coffee. She was sitting at a table with a friend of hers, Carmen, a junior from Portugal. They talk to each other, Giovanka in Brazilian and Carmen in Portuguese, so they can learn each other’s languages. I find it very interesting and inspiring how intrigued Giovanka is to learn about everything and anything. She is already learning English, one of the hardest languages to learn, but that’s just not enough for her-she casually decided to pick up Portuguese, too. One thing I’ve noticed about her is her drive to learn. She is SO excited to begin at TCU in the fall and learn biology and chemistry, no matter how hard she hears it is going to be. She is willing to spend day in and day out studying in order to achieve her goal and that’s very inspiring to me. She even writes an essay every single day in English just for her own personal benefit to improve her English. It isn’t an assignment or anything, she is just so driven to succeed and learn English that she has the discipline to take the extra step. I think that, because she is from overseas and has come all the way to America for school, she wants to get as much out of her experience as she can. She wants to be the best student, friend, and person she can be here at TCU.

I began asking Giovanka about her friends at TCU. She has a group of foreign friends that she always hangs out with, along with some American friends that she has made from living in Colby. I asked her which group she likes better and she said she likes them both. She enjoys hanging out with her American friends but she feels as though there is a part of her that they don’t understand because she isn’t from here (like how she kisses people goodbye on the cheek and by no means wants to flirt). She reminds me of my mom when she first moved to America for college; she tried and tried to make American friends but no one understood her culture and homesickness like her other foreign friends did and it made her feel more at home.

We began talking about movies-she saw the newest craze, The Hunger Games, and hated it and I have yet to see it and do not plan on seeing it. She has such a caring heart; she said when all the kids were killing each other (sounds like a weird movie if you ask me) she couldn’t stop crying because she hated it so much. We moved on to the movie This Is War, where we both fell in LOVE with Tom Hardy, one of the movie’s main characters. He’s not your typical American guy- he has an accent and a kind of rugged look. I was very happy that she has such good taste, makes all of our conversations so much more fun. All in all, I enjoyed my conversation with Giovanka. She’s always fun to talk to and always so interested to learn new words and get corrected when she talks.