​This week I wanted to know if there were any special ways of staring a conversation politely verus the alternative, rudely.  When I say starting a conversation I don't just mean walking up to a random person and starting to say something completely random or interrupting someone else's conversation to start your's I mean starting a new one even if it is with a random person.

This week as I mentioned in my last post I was going to try and get down to my old school to talk to my old spanish teacher, Maestra Sandra.  Thankfully we both had an opening and I was able to then go back to my old school and interview her.

Questions

- ¿Cuales son algunos de las formas para empezar un conversación? (What are some ways of beginning a conversation?)

- ¿Usted tiene una forma favorita? (Do you have a favorite way?)

- ¿Hay mas formas a empezar una conversación con alguien cortésmente o mas formas que no son cortésmente? (Are there more ways of starting a conversation politely or impolitely?)

I learned a few things through this interview, one being that that it really doesn't seem like it's all that hard to start a conversation politely.  Another thing that I learned is that being polite when starting a conversation is extremely important in some place, more important than I thought.

One way to be polite while starting a conversation can be found here

Another conversation that I completely forgot about was one that I had with Diego, a guy I met on conversation exchange. Our conversation wasn't very much but it did run pretty smoothly until he started correcting me and having me talk in English. But it did start off we just Spanish right off the bat. Which was pretty neat, and I was happy to see that he used words I didn't know with me. This isn't much since I hadn't talked to Diego since that chat but I feel as though him and Kleber are the most helpful out of the ton of other people I got in contact with.

​The person I had help was DeShawn McLeod. The question that is was manly on was "What is the differences between Spanish and English." We talked about conjugations and the structure of the language.

This week I spoke with Maria about the amount of criminal activity in her home country, Venezuela. For this post I follow the same question path I followed in my first post with regards to trying to be direct with out being offensive. Maria explained to me that there is a lot of drug activity that the government trys to stop however, the president is not very efficient so, he fails most of the time.

I chose to speak to Maria because I am close with her so, she'd know I was not trying to offend her and she comes from a country that is less expressed in the Latino population of Philadelphia.

This week, I only got in contact with my one helped Kleber.

He/she hasn't gotten back to me after responding to their questions but it was going having to answer the questions asked. But I tried to not use wordreference to help form my sentences. I think I would be good to just stick with communicating with Kleber, and send messages with me in Spanish and him/her in English so that way we both can learn. I only asked Kleber to ask me questions since I wasn't sure what to say, plus I didn't want to put too much of my business out there to someone I didn't know. Sadly Kleber didn't give me questions that required me to respond using different tenses meaning I would have to constantly conjugate my verbs. But we could work on that more this upcoming week.

Pre Question
De donde eres? que hiciste alli?
lo diferente que es aqui y alla?
Dime algo sobre su país? heres
¿como es la musica en la Puerto Rico ?

How do you anticipate your partner will respond to your questions?  
I have no idea towards these questions, because a lot of people I have been asking, reject me and curse at me. However when I find the right person, I think they are going to help me understand and tell me what I need to know. Also conversation is going to go smooth and friendly as I hope.
4.What are you looking forward to about this conversation?
I am really looking forward to a nice and respectful intelligent person that would be able to help me and learn what I have in plan for them.
5.What are you nervous about?
I actually kind of nervous about what they would say to me, since I have asked couple of other people and they reject and behave rude towards me.

Post Conversation
 
Who did I speak with and why did I choose that person?

I spoke to Pricilla, Pricilla is one of my good friends and she saw that I was in need of her help so she offer to help me accomplish my Spanish goals.

• What did you learn about them? What did you learn from them?

I learn a lot from her, their music and the way it is similar to the United States. For example  is sometimes hot and cold there same as America. I thought it was always hot in Puerto Rica.

Why are things the way they are? 

What does Music look like in Puerto Rico? 

Why is the beat different from other spanish speaking places to puerto rican music? 

Why don't people in puerto rico like music from other countries? is because of the grammar or pronunciation? 

Why are things pronounced different? 

Why are their the same words but different meaning. 

Why do spanish speaking country use the same word but have a different meaning for it? 

Why for puerto ricans carbon is a bad word and for Mexicans its to call someone a friend?

How do you anticipate your partner will respond to your questions? 

I think that she (they) will tell me it's just the way it is and how they were raised

What are you looking forward to about this conversation?

To understand why are the same words have different meaning depending where you go in the spanish world.

What are you nervous about? 

Saying things wrong in spanish or not knowing how to say some words or the meaning of some words.

Reflection questions

• Who did I speak with and why did I choose that person?
• What did you learn about them? What did you learn from them?
• How did this interaction help you move towards achieving your personal goal?
• What specifically did you do well according to your goals/expectations?
• What specifically do you need to improve on? (Quote specific things you said or did and what you would have done or said if you could do it again)r

Why are the accents different in every spanish speaking countries 

Why do Mexicans have their agent, puerto ricans their own and Dominicans but we all speak spanish?