"Man, this is confusing. What's a 'flat white'?"
Yet, when an American tourist stopped him on Paulista Avenue and asked, "Hey, where can I get a good coffee around here?" Marco’s brain became a sinking cargo ship.
"No! He went to the coffee shop, so he ordered coffee."
Marco had studied English for seven years. He could diagram a sentence with the precision of a surgeon. He knew the difference between present perfect and past perfect. His vocabulary lists were legendary among his classmates in São Paulo.
The woman looked up, smiled, and said something that changed his life: "No noise. Only water song. You learn English like water, boy. Not like rock."
"He went to the coffee shop."