More students, Yay!

Sept 9, 2013

This past week a friend of mine, or more accuratly, my girlfriend, Belkis, helped me with looking at some classifieds online for job listings for English teachers. There were a couple of promising ads so I created a CV letter and sent it off to them. The next day I got a phone call from one of the companies. They are called Starway and are a new company, a new branch of an existing company. So I got called in for an interview with Daniel and Alejandros.

Both of them have lived many years in the USA and speak very good English. Alejandros is from Argentina, Daniel is Colombian. They have brought me on to be their English teacher. The goal of the company is to teach English to corporate execs and later expand to the lower ranks. Right now we have clients with a company called Kal Tire, they provide tires to the mining industry. I will be teaching the top 5 execs in the company. Two of them are itermediate level English speakers, the other 3 are complete beginners. I am supposed to start on Monday but the beginners books have still not arrived from the supplier. Daniel and Alejandros are in the process of signing on another client - Avianca Airlines. Hopefully that will be completed soon. And a couple days ago the three of us went to a clinic and spoke to a person there about teaching their managers English. Starway is also in talks with a couple other companies. This is great news, thanks for all your prayers.

In my last post I wrote about the jazz band that I was invited to play in, and my need for an alto sax mouthpiece. I still need one. I have received a message from one nephew who might be able to get one at a reasonable cost, but I am *hoping* to get one at no cost, hoping somebody reading this will have one just laying in a drawer not being used. If so, and you have no use for it, maybe you could put it in an envelope and mail it to me? I can't afford to buy a mouthpiece, here or in the US. If it turns out that someone does have one and can mail it to me, here is my address:
Charles Wiegand Kr. 17A No. 68-03b Soledad, Atlantico, Colombia (no zip code)

One of these days I will actually take some time to fix the photo album on this web site so I can post some pictures. They aren't great pics as my only camera is the one built into my old Blackberry cellphone. But at least they are pictures to share.

I recently discovered there are actually TWO McDonalds here in Barranquilla, at two malls. And a Burgar King! I couldn't beieve that, and it turns out Belkis used to work there some years ago. And there are a number of Subway shops. All of these \"American\" fast food joints are in malls, not stand alone restaurants. Other than those, the only \"fast food\" here is actually quite healthy - chicken, rice, potatoes, yucca, are the most common, plus some places have steak (thin slices, not the thick hunks of meat common in the US). So there is no \"super size\" type portions. We all know the overweight/obesity problem in the US, 49% of the entire population is overweight or obese. Here in Colombia the number I heard on the TV was 28%. Could that fast food/junk food diet so common in the US be the difference? I believe that is a big part of it, combined with a lifestyle lacking in any kind of exercise or any useful amount of exercise.

Till next time God bless you and have a great week!