Conversation Partners: Fifth Meeting

           I met with Ileana for the fifth time the other day, and we continued talking about having a cultural food night. This could be because we really want this to happen, or perhaps the fact that we have all of our meetings at lunchtime that we keep pushing the issue. Either way, it still sounds like a good idea to me! Anything with food is a welcome experience.

            We also talked about Ileana’s job search in the area. She wants to have a job and the recreation center or something of the like. Ileana loves sports and she plays seemingly all of them. If I haven’t mentioned that Ileana is incredibly athletic before, she is. I also may have neglected to mention that we always meet at NRG in the recreation center because she works out immediately after our conversations. Regardless, she is finding out that there is a slight language barrier that is preventing her from getting a job. It isn’t so much that she simply doesn’t know the language, but rather that she says different things that are expected because her English is not completely fluid yet. Essentially, she told the employer that she should get the job because she has a great body and likes sports. Because of this, we have been talking more about interviewing skills and working on improving her speech for those situations. Hopefully after enough time working on these skills, her interviews will improve and she can find local employment.

            Relating to the employment issue is the fact that living out here is more expensive than it is in Venezuela. She has expressed that while she does not need a job to live in Fort Worth, she does need a job to live with any degree of comfort in Fort Worth. So right now, I am dedicating some extra hours to helping her interview to the best of her capability. I’m rooting for her! I’ll be meeting her again later today, I can check up on how that interview process is going. Maybe things are beginning to look up in her job hunt.