| I've been reading your personal statement, Paul. |
| First, let's talk about your work experience in South America. |
| What took you there? |
| Was it to gain more fluency in Spanish? |
| Well, as I'm combining Spanish with Latin American studies, |
| my main idea was to find out more about the way people lived there. |
| My spoken Spanish was already pretty good in fact. |
| So you weren't too worried about language barriers? |
| No. |
| In fact, I ended up teaching English there, |
| although that wasn't my original choice of work. |
| I see. |
| How did you find out about all this? |
| I found an agency that runs all kinds of voluntary projects in South America. |
| What kind of work? |
| Well, there were several possibilities. |
| You mean construction? Engineering work? |
| Yes, getting involved in building projects was an option. |
| Then there was tourism - taking tourists for walks around the volcanoes - |
| which I actually chose to do, |
| and then there was work with local farmers. |
| But you didn't continue with that project. Why not? |
| Because I never really knew whether I'd be needed or not. |
| I'd thought it might be difficult physically, but I was certainly fit enough... |
| now, I wanted to do something that had more of a proper structure to it, I suppose, |
| I get demotivated otherwise. |
| What do you think you learned from your experience? |
| It must have been a great opportunity to examine community life. |
| Yes, but it was difficult at first to be accepted by the locals. |
| It was a very remote village |
| and some of them were reluctant to speak to me - |
| although they were always interested in my clothes and how much I'd had to pay for them. |
| Well, that's understandable. |
| Yes, but things soon improved. |
| What struck me was that when people became more comfortable with me and less suspicious, |
| we really connected with each other in a meaningful way. |
| You made good friends? |
| Yes, with two of the families in particular. |
| Good. |
| What about management. |
| Did you have a project manager? |
| Yes, and he gave me lots of advice and guidance. |
| And was he good at managing too? |
| That wasn't his strong point! |
| I think he was often more interested in the academic side of things than filling reports. |
| He was a bit of a dreamer. |
| And did you have a contract? |
| I had to stay for a minimum of three months. |
| My parents were surprised when I asked to stay longer - six months in the end. |
| I was so happy there. |
| And did anything on the administration side of things surprise you? |
| What was the food and lodging like? |
| Simple... but there was plenty to eat and I only paid $7 a day for that, which was amazing really. |
| And they gave me all the equipment I needed... even a laptop. |
| You didn't expect that then? |
| No. |
| Well, I'll look forward to hearing more. |
| But now let's look at these modules. |
| You'll need to start thinking about which ones you'll definitely want to study. |
| The first one here is Gender Studies in Latin America. |
| It looks at how gender analysis is reconfiguring civil society in Latin America. |
| Women are increasingly occupying positions in government |
| and in other elected leadership positions in Latin America. |
| I think you'd find it interesting. |
| If it was to do with people in the villages rather than those in the public sphere, I would. |
| Okay. |
| What about Second Language Acquisition? |
| Do you think I'd find that useful? |
| Well, you've had some practical experience in the field, I think it would be. |
| I hadn't thought about that. |
| I'll put that down as a definite, then. |
| Okay. |
| What about indigenous Women's Lives. |
| That sounds appropriate. |
| I thought so too, but I looked at last year's exam questions and that changed my mind. |
| Don't judge the value of the course on that. |
| Maybe talk to some other students first and we can talk about it again later. |
| Okay. |
| Yes, and lastly, will you sign up for Portuguese lessons? |
| My Spanish is good, so would I find that module easy? |
| Not necessarily. |
| Some people find that Spanish interferes with learning Portuguese... |
| getting the accent right too. |
| It's quite different in a lot of ways. |
| Well, I'd much sooner do something else, then. |
| Alright. |
| Now, what we need to do... |