THE STORY OF OUR FRIENDSHIP

Student A: Yeison Martinez from Sopo

Student B: Sebastian Lozano from Bogota
Student C: Maira Pinzon From Bogota

Price: Three tickets to travel to Toronto, Canada to practice English.

Paragraph 1: Introduce each one of your partners (names and nationalities), write some facts about your
hometowns and describe the reasons why being a pen pal is a good experience.

Paragraph 2: Name some tips to keep in touch with a pen pal, write about some of the activities done to
practice English and how your English has been improving.

Paragraph 3: Write relevant information about England, its “cultural faux pas” and the places you will visit
if you win the challenge.

Hi everybody!

I'm Yeison from Sopo, my friends are Sebastian and Maira from Bogota. Sebastian is 26,
Maira 31 and Yeison 22. Sopo is located in Cundinamarca and it is a very friendly town and
has the most delicious desserts, Bogotá is located in Cundinamarca, its official language is
Spanish, it is the main city of Colombia and its dish Traditional is ajiaco, Sebastian is a
great cook. His ajiaco is very, very delicious and Maira usually eats the ajiaco with cream.
Yeison has also some Sopo videos and some very delicious alpine desserts! We have been
friends for 4 months and we met through college. We wanted to be a co-worker to teach
English because we had the same dream: to speak English very well and learn about
different cultures. The best experience of being friends by correspondence is being able to
communicate more easily, even if we live in different cities we can continue to speak and
learn English and our common tastes.

Let’s talk about the experience of being a coworker. We have different schedules, so we
have planned a schedule once a week to make video calls via meet, and we have prepared
different topics to talk about (music, apps, food, English texts, etc.). In addition, we have a
WhatsApp group and every afternoon we talk to our different friends to enrich what we
learned and send English speaking audios and interesting photos we find during the day.
Each week, a member of the group sends out the activities we need to do to improve our
English skills: a book to read, a song to memorize, a tongue twister to record and send to
the group. You can’t imagine how much our English has improved. Now, we can
understand movies and songs in English and speak more fluently in English.
When we knew about the challenge suggested by the "pen pals in funny letters" website,
we started reading about England and we really enjoyed its culture. You must know many
things before traveling to this interesting country. First, The British are punctual. Being
late is odd and in some cases it is considered to be rude. If you’re going to be late to
something, contact those involved as soon as you know you will be late. Also, it is less
rude to be late to a dinner party at someone’s home than it is to be late to a public
meeting such as dinner at a restaurant. When greeting a good friend or family member in
UK, you do not simply shake their hand. Many times, especially if one of the people that
are greeting or being greeted is female, you will frequently give or receive a small kiss on
the cheek. If you are not a close friend or family member, then the physical touch is
perceived as odd or uncomfortable you may shake hands, but often a smile and a bow of
the head is acceptable enough. If you are invited to the home of a native British person, it
is normal to bring along a gift, such as chocolate, wine, or flowers to say thank you. We
are going to visit all the amazing landmarks in London, there are castles, monuments, and
other architectural buildings all across the country and many of them are nowadays
transformed into touristic attractions. There is the Carrickfergus castle built during the
12th century on the shores of Belfast Lough. In the capital of UK, London there is the first
Romanesque building in England, the Westminster Abbey. We want to win this challenge
to know more about the England culture and to improve our English skills.

Best regards, Yeison, Sebastian and Maira.