Conversation 1

February 6, 2014           
My first meeting with Anastasia Fedorova, my conversation partner, was a nervous one.  At least that is what I felt coming in.  I felt as if my professor was setting me up on a blind date and it had to go well.  I did not want this person who I would be meeting with five other times to dislike me and despise talking to me.  If my partner did not like talking to me what are the chances that she continues to talk to me and if she did would it be difficult to get a good conversation going or would she force me to meet at the worst times possible for me.  My mind was racing with these thoughts as I texted her asking her where she was sitting in the library café.  I read her reply and started to walk over to her.

            As I walked over I saw her ask a random guy sitting at a table close to her a question and she told me right after we introduced ourselves she embarrassed herself asking a guy if he was Parker Wise and began to laugh.  I knew then that if she could laugh about our awkward situation that we would be able to talk and get along.

            Anastasia told me she was from Kaliningrad, Russia, which is located in the region of Russia surrounded by Poland, Lithuania, and the Baltic Sea.  She talked about life in a Russian town of over five hundred years old.  It sounded so different from the place I grew up in.  My town celebrated its one hundred year anniversary two years ago.  She grew up in old place full of history and old culture, and I grew up in a small town in old Comanche territory built on the agriculture industry that has continuously been developed to have the modern conveniences of three lane streets and large parking lots.  I have never lived in a place full of culture; instead I have lived in a spread out town with modern structures taking over many of the old ones.

             Anastasia then went on to tell me how she came to America.  She came to America in the summer of 2012 with a friend.  They both wanted to go to Chicago, but the program she came with did not allow anyone under the age of twenty-one to go and work in Chicago.  She ended up getting a job at a Holiday Inn in Galveston.  Anastasia knew very little English and so did most of her coworkers who were largely of Hispanic descent. Communicating was difficult for her at first and she depended on sign language to communicate with her coworkers until she knew enough English to communicate verbally with them.  She told me the language she wants to learn after English is Spanish, because she already started to learn some with her coworkers and she says her working experience her first summer here has created a drive in her to know as many languages as possible.

            I cannot imagine how hard it would be to move to a place halfway around the world.  I cannot imagine how much more difficult it would be if I could not communicate with the others.  I have great respect for how hard Anastasia had worked to be able to speak English as great as she did in our first meeting.  I knew I was only starting to understand her culture and how different it must have truly been to come America and join the TCU IEP.