• Mishearing By Naoko Hattori

• My region in Poland By Pawel Racis
• Madrid By Mario Pascual Nombela
• My life in Bulgaria and America By Rositsa Dimitrova

• Nazareth By John Shakkour

• The Genius, Ray Charles By Marco Miniello

Since I came to the USA , I have been writing in my diary every day. Most of my entries are about my English. Since it’s not my native language, I have encountered a lot of misunderstanding in daily life. Here are some of the things I wrote in my diary.

When I started working at a restaurant, I couldn’t differentiate between medium rare and medium well. I had difficulty hearing the customer clearly. We don’t have the “R” sound in Japanese so those words were confusing for me.

Another time one of my restaurant guests asked me after she got her check, “Could I get two coffees? I said, “Sure.” I thought my guests had changed their minds and decided to have coffee. I was busy so I asked an assistant server to bring two cups of coffee to my guests. After a while, he came back and told me, “Naoko, it wasn’t coffee.” I couldn’t understand why he came back with two cups of coffee in his hands. Finally, I went to the table and asked them what they wanted. Then, pointing at the bill, one guest said,”We need two of them, copy, copy!” I understood then, it wasn’t coffee; it was copy.

When we pay attention to what people say, we can find a lot of misunderstandings, especially if that pronunciation doesn’t exist in our native language.

(Editor’s note: Readers, please send us more stories of funny mistakes you have made as you learn English as your second language.)

Poland is in the center of Europe . It is a medium-sized country where about 40 million people live. The capital city is Warsaw.

I was born in the south of Poland , near the mountains in an industrial area where 5 million people live. Before 1990 there were about 70 mines, but now there are only a few. My father and many people worked on the mining industry. Coal was called Polish gold and supplied many jobs for Poland.

This is a special region where there is another culture and dialect. When there were 70 mines, the air was very dirty and living was hard and unhealthy. A lot of people had allergies and were sick. But now my region is becoming clean and nature is getting better.

My name is Mario Pascual Nombela and I am studying at the Atlanta English Institute. I am 21-years-old. I was born in Madrid.

Madrid is the capital of Spain and is a beautiful, old city. Madrid is very different from Atlanta because I think that Atlanta is a city for cars and Madrid is a city for the people.

I like Atlanta but it is a complicated city for new people because you need a car for everything since the public transportation is a little bad and you cannot know the city. But the people are very nice.

Madrid is an excellent city and the public transportation is very good. I think it is the best city in the world. The city is smaller in comparison to Atlanta and the distances between places are shorter. This is very important for public transportation. You can move through the city and you don’t need a car. In Madrid, there are busses, trains and metros.

In 2003, the prince got married in Madrid and because of this; the city had to be impeccable because he is the successor to the throne. At this moment, Madrid is doing a lot of renovation work.

(Editor’s note: Do you know the difference between capital and capitol: Capital is the official city where a state, provincial or national government is located. Capitol is the building in which the governing body of a state meets.)

Before I came to America I lived in Stara Zagora , Bulgaria . In this town I lived with my grandmother. I graduated from high school and was a student in college. Every day I want to school and after that I went to work at my job in a cafeteria. When I finished work I went to drink coffee with my friends. If the day was Friday we went to a disco club. Every day I went somewhere with my boyfriend. Yes, Bulgaria was fun, but now I am in America.

I came to Atlanta with my sister and boyfriend. We came here on the student program, “Work and Travel.” I have a part-time job at Six Flags. Now, I live with my parents in Dekalb County . My life here isn’t easy because everything is new for me. But this is life and everybody must know that. Life is a fight.

This is my past life and my life now. Forever Bulgaria will be in my heart. However, my new life is in America with the millions of others who have left their homelands for a new and better life.

The history of my family in Nazareth goes back in history over 2,000 years to about the time of Christ. I was born in Nazareth , Israel in 1982. My family includes my two sisters and three brothers. We have a family business located in the center of the city. We sell construction supplies, but we do not do any actual construction work. All of my immediate family is still in Nazareth and running our family business.

We have a small family compared to many, but we have a big name because everyone knows my family. In Nazareth there are 20 to 30 family names. We know each other by family names that have many generations. In each family the older son takes his father’s first name.

Nazareth is a small city with the buildings very close to one another making it very crowded. Nazareth is like a soup spoon with the people centered in the middle and hills surrounding the city. We tend to build up rather than spreading out due to the lack of land. Unlike the United States , a building may hold many generations of a family at the same time. Usually each member of a family will have a separate level of the house.

The population of Nazareth is over 85,000 people which is made up about 75% Muslims and 25% Christians. Many of the Christians are leaving Nazareth and going to Europe and further west due to the political and spiritual unrest.

This is a great example of how a person can be motivated in his life even if he has serious disabilities such as being blind. In this extraordinary case, it is the power of music that drove this man.

Ray Charles was born in Albany , Georgia on September 23, 1930. Even as a child, his love of music was in his veins. He used to say, "I was poor, I was black and I was blind." In fact, at that time, it was not easy, but he found success believing in himself. He always had a smile upon his face, behind his famous Ray-Ban sunglasses.

He took part in "USA for Africa", a coalition of musicians for charity. Every song that he wrote was an event that filled his unusual life. He had an amazing mind which, unfortunately, was shocked by a terrible event that deeply influenced his life and his song writing. That was the death of his brother. In addition, he was addicted to drugs for many years. This problem was resolved only when he became an adult, but with great success.

His career was constantly progressing. Even though he had many hit records, he always tried new styles of music, especially blues and jazz, writing a history of the music in the process. He was an example for many musicians and this is one of many reasons the critics called him, "The Genius."

(Editor’s Note: Thank you to Marco Miniello and Dario Campregher Neto for sending stories from Atlanta English Institute. Dario’s story will appear in the July edition. The movie, “Ray,” about the life of Ray Charles was honored at the Academy Awards ceremony. It is now out to rent on video and DVD.)