Categories: uncategorized
Date: 10 August 2007 12:03:29
I was on the receiving end of a random act of kindness.
Living in a foreign country and trying to get a better grip on the language it occurred to me that reading a book in that language might help me. I'd still recommend that provided that you have some grounding to begin with, and it's a good way to maintain vocabulary if you don't get the chance to practice much (as is my situation now). Choosing what to read is quite important though - you wouldn't want someone to learn basic conversational English by reading Shakespeare for example. So I was looking for a book I knew and knew had relatively simple vocabulary. And so there I was browsing through a display box full of books when I found something that just about fitted the bill. I flicked through it and then started looking more intently, trying to read a few lines, trying to see if the level of difficulty of the task was right. And for reasons that I still can't fathom, a middle-aged gentleman next to me said something that I understood as "I'll buy it for you" and quickly dashed to the till, returned to hand me the book, and then vanished. (No, not literally, in case you're thinking this was some kind of mysterious book-buying angel). I had just enough time to blurt out some thanks. And to this day I've been left grateful and puzzled in more-or-less equal measure.