GIOVANNI

After returning to IU this fall I volunteered to be a "conversation partner" for an international student. I turned in an application at the International Center in August and was told I would be paired up with someone who had similar interests as me, similar ideas, similar....etc. Fast forward to October. I am finally contacted and told I now have a conversation partner named Giovanni and he is very eager to meet me! I too was excited to find out I had a conversation partner. The program is designed to help international students become more immersed in the American culture and in return the foreign partner is suppose to share things about their home country, whether it be things about their culture or language lessons.

I finally am able to meet Giovanni and find out he is a PhD student studying finance and he hails from Naples, Italy. I'm not going to say I wasn't shocked when I first met him. I was kind of expecting someone a little more my age and maybe not someone so intimidating on the academic level. I'm still trying to figure out how we were matched up as partners. The only thing I can really figure out is that I had put on my application that I traveled in Italy earlier in the year. Needless to say I have been meeting with Giovanni at least once a week now for over a month and have learned this whole program is a lot more challenging than I had expected. This is the first time Giovanni has ever been in the states and he is not familiar with many of our ways. It has been a great reminder to me of how we always assume and expect visitors to know how to act in our country and how unforgiving a midwestern community is to outsiders.