I am a bit nervous as I enter the huge auditorium filled with hundreds of students on their first day of university. As I walk down the stairs from the back, I sneak glances at all of them fiddling with their new information packets, checking their cellphones and sneaking glances back at me. I walk to the front of the room and sit in the first row with the rest of the teachers. Behind me I can hear the students nervously chatting, anxious for their new lives as university students to begin.
I am always surprised when my students tell me in an excited voice that they have a part-time job where foreigners stop by so they can actually SPEAK English! It is as if they suddenly realize, while handing over a café latte to some foreign businessman, that English is actually a living language. They were talking in English! In real English!