Meet Gregory

My conversation partner’s name is Gregory. He is from Venezuela, and I have extremely enjoyed getting to know him. He has a great sense of humor, and our first few conversations have been informative and fun. In our first meeting, we focused on learning about each other’s cultures.

            I learned about the Venezuelan culture, and I was shocked. Our entire conversation consisted of him praising how lucky we are in America. He told countless stories of how his country is not safe, suffering, and has a weak economy. I was blown away by the facts he told me. The most interesting was about the grocery system in Venezuela.

            Gregory said that each citizen is given a number, and the number labels what day of the week that person is allowed to shop at the grocery store. An average citizen is allowed to shop one time a week—only once a week! On top of that, each person is only allowed to purchase a certain amount of some products. He explained that milk is an extremely rare commodity. Gregory said that one person is only allowed to purchase a half gallon of milk at a time—even if they are shopping for an entire family. Produce and other similar products are the same. One is allowed to only purchase a certain amount. Gregory compared it to Kroger and how he can walk to Kroger and buy as many gallons of milk as he wants on any day of the week. He was extremely grateful to be in the USA.

            Not only are citizens limited to the day and amount of a product he/she can purchase, but also the lines in the grocery store and insanely long. He said the average wait time is an hour and a half to get one’s groceries! Families will send one member to go wait in line, so it results in a less amount of groceries for a family. It broke my heart hearing this, seeing as I take my grocery store visits for granted. He also mentioned that the homeless or unemployed will spend their entire day in the grocery stores purchasing groceries, then selling them on the streets for four times the amount they paid. People will purchase the over-priced groceries for the benefit to not wait in line all day.

            The last part of our conversation was about the safety in Gregory’s country. He repeated over and over how lucky we are in the United States to be able to go outside after dark without the fear of being kidnapped. I heard stories about his friends who would walk into a bar after night, get kidnapped, then ransomed for money. During our conversation, I could not help but think about how lucky I am to be in my country where I can feel safe. It is a luxury I never think about, but people all across the world do not have that luxury.

            Seeing as our conversation was quiet somber, we ended with what made each other laugh. We scrolled through Gregory’s twitter account, and I saw that he finds fail videos absolutely hysterical. He also finds pictures funny. We decided that the next time we would meet we would each bring the funniest joke/video/picture we could find. I am thrilled to continue to learn more about Gregory and his culture.