Conversation Partner, Take 2

Another Conversation Partner!!!

            This week, I learned that I would have a new conversation partner. I am unaware of what happened to my previous conversation partner, but since we only met once it is not that big of a deal. Anyways, I found out about this early in the week, and we have already met once with plans to meet again Friday afternoon. I am excited for the opportunity to get to know another conversation partner.

            My new conversation partner is named Guilherme. He is a student in the Intensive English Program here at TCU that came here all the way from Brazil. I do not remember the name of the city he is from, but I probably couldn’t spell it right even if I did. He said it was a relatively small town of about 60000 people. Or did he say 120000? Now I’m not actually sure. Whatever, I’ll just ask him tomorrow. His hometown is pretty close to Sao Paulo, which is a very big city in Brazil. He likes his hometown because it is small and quiet, but when he wants to go to a big city it is only about a half hour away.

            Of course, I had to introduce myself as well during our conversation, so I shared with Guilherme a little about myself. I talked about my family and where I live. When I said I lived in Arkansas, I doubted that he would know where that was, but to my surprise he knew exactly where it was AND he had actually been there himself! I was quite impressed. Now, Guilherme has never been to my part of Arkansas, up in the northwest corner, but he has relatives in Hot Springs, a city that I have visited on several occasions. In fact, Hot Springs is the city where the state of Arkansas usually hosts its high school cross-country championship race. I have run at that race several times, so I know a little about the area. It was really cool that Guilherme had been to Arkansas before. What a small world!

            Of course, since we’re guys, we talked about sports. I told him a little about my background as a runner throughout high school and for two years in college. If you want to read more about that, feel free to check out one of my previous blog. Then we talked about his favorite sports. Brazil is known for it’s superb soccer teams and amazing, passionate fans, so naturally I asked him if he liked soccer. To my surprise, he actually doesn’t like it all that much. He and I share a similar view towards soccer in that it is ok, and sometimes fun to play, but it is not really that fun to watch a game that lasts ninety minutes with a potential 0-0 draw. We didn’t go into the fine details of the sport, but one thing I absolutely cannot stand about soccer is the offside rule. I understand, at least to some degree, why the rule is there, but it seems like all it does is punish a player for getting behind the defense. In most sports, like (American) football for example, that’s kind of the point. But I digress.

            Overall, we had a fun first meeting. I’m looking forward to meeting him again on Friday. We might try to play basketball in the Rec or something. Ok, until next time, thanks for reading! I should work on a sign-off phrase. Something like, “You stay classy, San Diego!” Hopefully I can come up with something more original than that, but until now, bye bye!

P.S. Yes, I am excited for the Anchorman sequel. And yes, I do plan on being severely disappointed.