ESL Blogs

It was a pleasant surprise to receive an email from Irene in early January 2013, telling me that she and her husband were coming for another two months holiday. This was the second time Irene and Herbert escaped from minus ten degree, cold and gloomy Germany to a welcoming 16-degree and blue-sky Madeira Island. It was definitely a good trade.

It had been exactly a week since their arrival when Irene finally available to meet up with me. The wet market became our meeting point. It was easy to find and made a good reference too.

From the distance I could see Irene walked towards me smiling and obviously I smiled back. After the customary greetings and huggings Irene shot me with her first question.

“How is your Portuguese language?”

I dreaded all along that she would ask me about that. Here I was hoping she might forget about it as I did not have much improvement. Truth be told, there was no improvement at all.

It was funny how things went. Irene and I met for the first time at the Academia de Linguas in January 2012. After a week through her holiday in Funchal, just by snapping fingers, Irene’s light bulb turned on and she decided to learn Portuguese language. Consequently, she visited the Academia where I was taking my Portuguese lessons. Though the lessons had started three weeks ago when she checked in, Irene was allowed to join the class on the 4th lesson.

There I was in the class with four other students who all of them were Russians and none spoke either English or Portuguese. The only form of communication we had established was smiling at each other, probably a little bit of sign language. It actually turned out that one of them could speak a little Portuguese. Conveniently, she became interpreter between the teacher and the rest of the Russians. While she was busy translating the lessons, both Irene and I felt like we were in Grade 1, teacher was busy with them and was not looking, we started to talk. Irene could speak English and soon enough we were animated and engaged. We ended up sitting at the same table and took every chance asking about each other.

Back to present. I was not in the mood to talk about my Portuguese language, so I just grinned and shrugged. Instead, I countered with my own question.

“So what do you want to do today?”

How easy to distract Irene, she got excited and explained our programme for the day. La Rosa, a yarn shop was on the top of Irene’s things-to-do list, hence, became our first destination. Irene’s favourite leisure time was knitting. She had done a lot of socks for her friends, her family members and for herself which she wore them especially during winter times.

Irene preferred pure wools and she wanted to buy four different colours of yarns to make socks for one of her workers back in Germany. “This is a good time to practice our Portuguese,” Irene said once we arrived at the shop. Just at a mere thought was enough to make Irene beamed with a smile from ear to ear. I always admired her courage to try speaking in Portuguese every time she got a chance. Irene was very friendly and the best thing I liked about her was that the word demure was not in her life dictionary. As it turned out, the lady at the shop could not understand what Irene was trying to explain. Thus, Irene ended up explaining in English.

By the time we were done at La Rosa, Irene gave a hungry signal by rubbing her stomach. We then headed to Biofarma, Irene’s favourite food store. It was a pharmacy shop which also made available with a small restaurant at the underground floor, serving only vegetarian food.

A piece of paper on the noticeboard showed that they served different menu every day. We made our way to the food counter and simultaneously gazing at the food wondering and guessing the type of dishes they served for that day. A woman came to assist us and we took our time asking her each and every dish on the tray. Engrossed in the question and answer session, we were oblivious to the other customers behind us who were waiting impatiently. Slightly more than five minutes later we finally ordered and sat down enjoying our lunch and chat.

That was not the first time I had been introduced to vegetarian food. Though the food was good but vegetarian food and I would never have a future together.

We then proceeded to take a walk in the garden. It was so convenient that on the opposite side of the garden there was a group of street musicians playing wonderful musics. No buzzing sound but rather the flipping of small wings that caught my attention. I pointed out to Irene of some wild bees, small and big hopping from flowers to flowers searching and collecting nectars.

Then it hit me, we finally established an interesting topic for the day: BEES.

I steered Irene to a bench nearby so we could comfortably enjoying the garden while Irene shared some interesting facts about bees. Not a surprise since Irene was once a bee keeper and back in Germany, Irene worked at the market selling bee products. I was not so ignorant about bee community but probably had all information mixed up and always had an impression that royal jelly was the product made of honey. The turth, royal jelly was a secretion from the worker bees themselves and it was the sole food for their queen and female bees. Have you ever thought that the queen bees were not born but produced? That was the fact. In the event of the existing queen bees were dying, the worker bees themselves would start to produce next queen bees by feeding the larvae with only royal jelly during their entire existence.

Irene and I made an effort to see each other once a week. Visiting La Rosa and lunch at Biofarma had become our weekly routine. We shared and exchanged quiet a number of information and I would say our English had improved tremendously by then.

On the last week of her holiday, Irene decided to visit the famous Botanical Garden Cable Car with me. The garden was situated on the hill and about three kilometres from Funchal city centre. Up to the hill we went by a seven-minute cable car ride while enjoying the stunning and panoramic view of Funchal town and surroundings.

We had spent an about thirty minutes at the garden then decided to make our way down. Not by the cable car but by foot. Irene wanted to prolong our last moment together. It was three kilometres down to the city centre. Though the road was not as steep but I anticipated my legs were going to be sore the next day. We stopped a few times to watch wild bees enjoying the nectars from the blooming flowers by the road side. Irene took the opportunity to explain the different types of bees we encountered and the different ways and habits of those bees searching for nectars.

We continued the journey downhill along the narrow and winding road. Then, from around the corner behind us we heard loud noice, scraping sound between wood and the apshalt accompanied by the histerical screaming and laughing. We sprinted to the side of the road and waited. Then it came and bypassed us, the famous tobbaggan sledges zipped down the hill at 48km per hour.

Half way down the hill Irene complained her calves were aching. But we did not stop until we reached the town and headed directly to another favourite restaurant of ours for refreshments and to stretch our legs muscles.

Two weeks had past since Irene was back in Germany that she had time to reply my email telling me the weather in Germany was five degrees during the day and minus two at night.