I had been learning English for several years already when I got to speak to a foreigner for the first time in my life. It occurred when I was a pupil

MEETINGS
I had been learning English for several years already when I got to speak to a foreigner for the first time in my life. It occurred when I was a pupil. We were having some English speaking classes after lessons to make our spoken English much better. Our teacher had a foreign friend who was about to come. And she decided to provide us with some real English speaking practice. His name was Phil and he was amazingly positive. Actually, I had never meet such a smiley person before. At first I was absolutely scared to pronounce a word out loud. As many pupils, I had a fear that I would make some mistakes, or my pronunciation would be a disaster and he would be horrified by my knowledge. But despite all these fears I did pronounce a word. And since then my spoken English was not a big problem for me anymore. The reality is that foreigners respect you for studying their language and you understand that there is only some practice necessary to improve it. We had a very nice conversation with Phil. We discussed his family, his job and he also shared some advice with us on how to make our English much better. Some of his advice was to practice, practice and practice every possible minute. After that meeting I was trying my best to study and practice more. And I had a chance to meet a foreigner again very soon. There was a sport event that was held in my city. The city was overcrowded with foreigners. Everyone was asking to help and I had no objections to practice my English. I got acquainted with great variety of people from different countries. We got along surprisingly well and still are good friends. Every summer on my holidays I visit some of them. I met their families, got to know their lives and am looking forward to some new meetings. So whenever or wherever you meet a foreigner, just be sure of your knowledge and just be ready to new opportunities. Sometime it can grow into a very good acquaintance.