Could You Speak A little Slower
Nov 20th, 2007 by Don Ray
Today was the day, that Darío Quiroz had invited me to participate in one of his English classes. I have done this before and it is always a special occasion for me. Today was in Universidad Latina. Here was another time one of Dario’s private classes.
I arrived a little early, because I wasn’t sure exactly where I would need to park. Darío met me at the reception area and we headed for his class room. On the way, we came upon the couple in the following photo. Darío thought they were probably dressed this way for a culture and tourism class, if I understood correctly. It provided a good opportunity to get a nice photo.
We now headed to the classroom on the third floor. There were 14 students in this class today. I understand that there are around 900 students in this University. There are morning and evening classes.
We started off with the students introducing themselves and telling me where they were from. They were from David, Concepcíon (Bugaba), Boquete, Dolega, San Felix and a couple other nearby towns. I received a very warm welcome and knew it was going to be a fun activity.
The format of the exercise to day had three part. In the first part, I talked about my time in Panama. My observations, likes and dislikes. This allowed the students to adjust to my speech velocity, my accent (I really don’t have an accent 
), and to become a little more comfortable with a stranger in the classroom.
For the second part, I spoke a little about my past career, and my website and as I spoke, each student got the opportunity to translate what I said into Spanish.
A third part was a little question and answer session. Hopefully they had as much fun as I did and they benefited from my participation in their class.
One of the funny things, that happened several times , was my coming close to hitting my head on a projector suspended from the ceiling. The students kept having to remind me to be careful. That is a problem being about a head taller than the average Panamanian.
A couple of the students arrived late and had placed a box on the desk. I asked the purpose of the box and they said it was Darío’s birthday. I asked how old he was going was today and heard ages ranging as high as 145. Students are the same all over the world. Darío told me his age, but I will let that remain a secret.
Here is a photo of Geraldine and Andrea setting up refreshments for the party.
This is a photo of the cake.
Here is a photo of the entire class. I think you can pick out Darío in the middle of the back row. Being surrounded by beautiful young ladies is a tough job, but somebody has to do it. Right Darío?
Here are the names of the students that were in today’s class. The names are do not reflect where they were in the photo.
- Sugely
- Luisa
- Digna
- Lury
- Melissa
- Iris
- Sannyakira
- Daphne
- Jeanne
- Rosalba
- Mitzila
- Estephance
- Geraldine
- Andrea.
Thanks for the opportunity to get to spend some time with all of you.
Hi DOn Ray, my first english course was in fact with prof. Dario when he worked in byte of chiriqui years ago.
Is very beautiful of your part, the way you can share with others and help them.
Best Regards
Hi Harmodio. I appreciate your taking the time to comment. Prof. Dario is a fine person and I enjoy helping him, when he asks.
Very nice of you to do such as cultural exchange in David. I teach ESL in the USA, and it’s amazing how much you can learn from students and guest speakers. Good job.
Juan
Hi Juan. Yes I always walk away feeling like I have learned something and getting to meet the leaders of tomorrow is always good.
Hi Mr. Don Ray, this is Jeanne, from Universidad Latina. I really enjoy the time that we spent together in the morning today. I want to thank you, because that was a great experience for me. Thank you so much!!!
Hi Jeanne. I am glad you enjoyed out time together. You are the first student to comment today. There should be a prize. Tell Prof. Darío, that you deserve a reward for commenting first.
Hi Mr. Don, this is Mitzila from teacher Dario’s class. I just want to thank you for spending part of your time with us this morning. It was a great experience for me and I hope we can repeat this kind of activities in a near future if you have the time to do it.
Hi Mitzila. Thank you for the nice comment. I can assure you that I enjoyed myself more than you did.