I was waiting downstairs in the campus center at 1PM today, the exact meeting place and time that Juan and I agreed upon, so after 15 minutes past one (he could have been late for culture reasons) I called Juan to see where he was. He told me that he had already met yesterday with different teacher. I told him that he can have more than one teacher, and asked him if he was still going to make the appointment today, but he told me that he was at home and was not planning on leaving. So I reiterated the fact that he can have more than one tutor a week; the more the help the better his English will be. I asked him when is the next time we can meet and he told me that he works in the kitchen on Mondays and Wednesdays at night, but the best time for him is Saturday at 1PM. Therefore, we made an appointment to meet in Dave’s Downunder this coming Saturday at 1PM. I hope he shows up this time.

The First Call

I called my friend Juan Henrique from Santo Domingo, and I was a bit worried that he would not understand my english, since he only has a basic understanding of the language (less than a year of experience). Anyways, I thought it would be a good idea to speak to him in english to already initiate the english learning. That did not work. So I spoke to him in spanish, but when he spoke back to me in Spanish I could not understand him because of his thick accent and the low volume of his voice; I also sensed a tone of frustration in his voice when I asked him to repeat himself a few times. I just hope he does not get frustrated with me when I am asking him to repeat his english the correct way. Anyhow, it took a few minutes and a good amount of repeating to finally come to the conclusion that we are going to meet on Sunday at 1PM in the Cafeteria. While I was talking to him, I wondered how he would recognize me, so I told him that I would be downstairs and that I have blond hair. He agreed, but did not sound very excited about the meeting, he was also worried about how many hours we would be meeting over the course of the semester; it sounded like he was intent on getting his 10 hours of instruction that he had requested on the form. I just hope that he is ready and open to learn the english language.