Conversation 6

Guilherme has really discovered some cool things to do in his time in the US. He has done anything from weekend trips to various volunteer endeavors with his girlfriend around Texas.  This week we talked even more about his weekend adventures.

Guilherme and his girlfriend attended a comic convention a few weeks back. We were talking today, for some odd reason, about people being stingy and conic convention is where our conversation ended up. The story behind this odd sequence of conversation was Guilherme’s experience at said comic convention. After waiting in line for an hour to get a comic book signed by one of the authors attending the convention, Guilherme and his girlfriend were disheartened to learn that the author was charging every person for a signature. Outrageous, right? I couldn’t help but wonder to myself if perhaps the guy was joking and Guilherme just misunderstood the joke because this seemed like such a strange thing for him to do. Guilherme must have read this on my face because he quickly whipped his phone out of his pocket two seconds later to show me proof of his bizarre encounter. He handed me his phone and on the screen I saw a picture of an absurdly small sign denoting that the author will charge a variable amount for his signature depending on the item on which it is signed.

This story perpetuated into some discourse about our shared surprise about this convention, and me barraging Guilherme will a plethora of questions about the comic convention (quite a foreign idea to me.) I thought that this story was interesting because we shared such disbelief over the stingy author. I also noticed that as we talked about the comic convention Guilherme definitely exhibited moments of self-deprecating humor, which I have started to notice everywhere since we have heard so much about it in class presentations. Guilherme kept joking about how weird he was for liking things like a comic convention and being “nerdy.”

We also talked today about Guilherme’s apartment situation. He was really excited to report that Friday-if all of his information is approved-he will be moving into an apartment on Hulen. He was telling me all about all of the amenities of the complex, a pool, gym, small library, and a tennis…tennis…he didn’t know what to call it. This stood out to me because this was one of the few times that he hasn’t been able to think of the word he wanted to use, or didn’t know it. “Court,” I filled in. He smiled and accepted the help graciously—I always get nervous correcting people or helping out in moments like this, but Guilherme was in no way offended.

Also while on the topic of his apartment, Guilherme brought up that the apartment comes unfurnished.  This part of our conversation also started off kind of funny because he pronounced Ikea in a bizarre fashion (I wish I could convey it in the blog.) But after he said it a second time and due to context, I knew exactly what he was referring to. We connected about this topic because my duplex that I am living in next year is similarly unfurnished. We both intend to fully furnish our new homes with the help of Ikea. We told each other funny stories about Ikea-mine about my envy of my younger sister’s room being completely decked out in Ikea-and giggled about it. Guilherme also found it funny how my sisters and I were always obsessed with decorating our rooms.

Naturally Spring Break also came up again today. Guilherme and I are both anxious for the upcoming break and both luckily only have one more day of class left after today. Although Guilherme’s class is supposed to go bowling this Friday for their field trip, he doesn’t consider this school. Although he may have to miss this outing to move into his apartment, Guilherme was telling me about how much he likes to bowl and that they also have it in Brazil. He also got a kick out of my stories about learning how to bowl in “gym” in high school. He especially enjoyed hearing about my mix up with which fingers you use to bowl.

To end our conversation today we reminded one another of our respective plans for the break. Guilherme is going to Abilene with his girlfriend to see her family and also to New Braunfels for a few days to a house that her family owns there. Guilherme is an extremely polite conversationalist and once again giggled as I told him a story about my uncle’s confusion by the New Braunfels High Scholl mascot—the unicorn. He literally laughed for about three minutes when I told him this story, ending our conversation in a similar state of disbelief as we started it—and he even Googled it to make sure I was right.

Our meeting today was light-hearted and amusing per usual. We met on Wednesday to accommodate for our schedules with the upcoming break. I honestly think that my coming straight from my speech therapy session for the day made me more attentive to Guilherme’s pronunciation differences and mistakes, which made this session especially interesting to me. I look forward to hearing about Guilherme’s apartment and trip to the land of unicorns when we return and have our last meeting.