We are very lucky

Hello class 101

I’m Alejandro from Mexico and I have been in the United States for only one month and a half. I am here for two reasons, the first is because I was very tired of the monotony where I was living, not because I didn’t like what I was doing. I love my country, my friends, my work and my family, but , after many years in the same city, with the same people, visiting the same places and having the same expectations, sometimes we need to take a rest and learn different things and experience other places. The second reason is that I want to learn to speak English.
When I first came to the United States, I was living in Berkeley with my brother and my almost sister in law, and I started looking for schools where I could study. Finally, after maybe ten days I found the Adult School in Berkeley, a big school with many classes and students from all over the world (maybe ten thousand), so I was very excited with my new school.

Exactly like in the Oakland Adult School, there are three different levels. After my test I stayed in the intermediate class. That class was just for pronunciation and it was only one hour each day, so I was bored and I was feeling that I was not advancing very much. All the students just sat in chairs to listen to the teacher. I never talked with my classmates more than ten words. All of us were only echoing the teacher’s pronunciation. I could not take a second class because all the different classes were offered in the same hour (stupid, no?).

For all these reasons, I think we are very lucky to be here in this school, and we are very lucky also to be in the 101 class, with Richard, somebody how really worries that their students learn to speak, read, and think in English. Thank you!

And I believe that we, as students, should be contributing in some way.We can offer ideas to do some personal or group activities. For my part, I propose we could learn some songs. I have a guitar and I could learn the chords and maybe somebody could play another instrument or something else. Perhaps Richard could dance to the song, no?

Alejandro Campa