Danielle TS#11

On 9/30, I met with Maritza for our next tutoring session. This one was a little bit different than our normal tutoring sessions as she wanted to focus only on speaking and listening skills as well as her overall comprehension skills. She wanted to talk about the presidential election, since she watched the debate that took place a few nights prior, and wanted to gain a better understanding of the American political system for her own educational purposes as well as be able to discuss the topic better not only with Americans, but her friends and family, too. Maritza is from Mexico, and so she had a lot of concerns about what would happen with NAFTA and the relations between Canada, Mexico, and the US if Trump was elected. She is very aware of our political situation and explained that Mexicans pay close attention to US politics as a lot of it can potentially have a huge impact on Mexico, especially when it comes to foreign policy and trade.  We had a good discussion about the political issues in America, as well as the political issues in Mexico. I definitely learned a lot from her about her political system, since I had very little knowledge of Mexico's system prior to our conversation. I also had a discussion about this with my converstaion partner, and Martiza and Vicky shared a lot of the same concerns despite being from Mexico and China, respectively. I didn't expect that because they are from two very different countries, but I definitely found it interesting.