My second TalkAbroad experience was actually extremely pleasant. I got the pleasure of speaking with Jean-Thomas Boisvert. He lives in Quebec, Canada and I believe that he is 21 years old. He studies politics and admitted that it takes a lot of speaking when discussing it. He is currently going to school at the moment and is not currently working at a job, but I believe that he was doing some sort of internship, I am not fully sure. He wants to become a deputy or officer though.

I feel like I did a great job of actually holding a conversation this time around. Instead of being repetitive and only saying “and you?”, I was able to ask questions and keep the conversation going. The conversation went well, and I was really pleased to meet someone new and learn a bit about their life. It is really interesting to see how similar and different the culture is, especially when I factored in that we were the same age. It was also cool to explore the sociocultural differences between our perceptions of law enforcement given the events that took place in 2020 (Racial injustice and Police brutality).  I feel like I could have used a lot more of the vocabulary that we learned, but overall, I felt like I spoke at a very reasonable pace, and I feel like the conversation flowed logically. My pronunciation was solid, and I felt like my ability to comprehend was a little better than the beginning although I definitely got stumped at certain points. Overall, the discussion was great, and I was happy to be able to meet someone as patient and kind as Jean-Thomas. 

I felt like I said “um” which is completely normal given that I am still at the beginner level of the language. I was proud of the way that I came up with certain things and improvised to continue the conversation even if I was unsure on how to respond. I want to work on being able to include more vocabulary into my conversations, but I am overall produce of the progress that I have made over the span of the last school year.