Chris H. CP 6

In lieu of Marcel, my new conversation partner Elder Sandoval met with me last week. Elder is a Colombian student from Cartagena, in Tallahassee for two weeks visiting mutual Panamanian friends. Just for fun, I took him to Super Perros, a local Colombian restaurant on the corner of Ocala and Tennessee, to see how it measured up in his eyes in authenticity. We had bandeja paisa and salchipapa, which were both delicious, with sides of frijos negros and mini gorditas. He expressed that the food was simplistic compared to the food in Columbia, and that the steak seemed slightly flavorless. We talked a little about Colombia and what he liked to do there. He told me that he just graduated high school and would be attending the Universidad Tecnologica de Panama, pursuing a degree in electrical engineering. He told me that ultimately he would like to work in the States. His English was good, and although I supplemented it with some of my own prior Spanish knowledge, I could tell that he had a fair understanding of English grammar and tenses. His accent was his main obstacle, and he confused English words, such as star with start, and others. I felt that he quickly became unreceptive when I tried to correct his word usage and accents, which was slightly less encouraging than Marcel in many ways, but I did enjoy his depictions of Colombia, which is a country I’ve never been to but have always wanted to see.