When's a good time for an English lesson?

The phone rang just after 10pm one evening. That isn’t unusual. People here will often call right up till 11:30 or so, though they will rarely phone before 10am - this is a town where nobody likes to awaken early! It was my landlord on the other end of the line. She explained that her daughter forgot to come to her English lesson with me at 7:30 and she was asking if she could come now.

It was one of those moments where I am struck by the differences between cultures. I could not imagine any circumstance in my home country where it would be acceptable to phone a teacher late at night and ask for a 45 minute English lesson. Here though, 10pm isn’t late and so my student arrived at 10:15 and she left at 11pm and I gritted my teeth through the whole lesson. The other thing is that my student is a mere 10 years old and I would think that she should be safely tucked into bed by that time of the night but again, it isn’t unusual even for toddlers to still be awake at midnight. I often think that this must be an entire nation of sleep-deprived people.

My student is quite a challenge. Her mother is my landlord and she approached me in August asking me to tutor her daughter. I don’t actually like teaching English very much, so when my landlord asked me to teach Aisha I hesitated, desperately groping for a plausible excuse. This moment’s hesitation was enough to make my landlord’s eyes narrow and her whole demeanour told me that if I wished to remain her tenant and I wished to keep the rent reasonable, then I would cheerfully accept to tutor her daughter – for free. Thereafter I have spent 45 minutes or more each Wednesday and Friday night trying to teach a wiggly 10 year old about verbs and adjectives. Fortunately, she is quite a nice girl but like all 10 year olds she has her moments and they are usually on those nights when I am the most tired. Still, I am now her mother’s favourite person. She has probably figured out just how much my lessons are really worth (a native speaking English tutor is very expensive here) and so I doubt that I will be evicted any time in the near future.