Sunday, March 25, 2012

ESU Estonia members meet Michael Polt, the U.S. Ambassador to Estonia

On Wednesday, March 21 ESU Estonia members had an American evening at the National Library. We met Mr. Polt, the US Ambassador, William O’Connor and Tiiu Vitsut, both from Public Affairs department. We enjoyed a fantastic round-table talk in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere as well as American chocolate cookies, made by Billy’s wife for us, and a glass of wine.


Mr. Polt introduced himself, his close friend and colleague Mr.O’Donnell, who he had brought to the meeting. Then the Ambassador asked each person to introduce themselves too and talked briefly to everyone. The main topic of the event was the English language: why it had became ‘Lingua franka’ for the whole world, what are the benefits and disadvantages of that for native speakers, what difficulties foreigners experience communicating with people of various countries with lots of accents and how they can benefit from that, etc… Everyone had a chance to talk or ask a question. So, that was a real English-speaking evening we all enjoyed. But it was not the only good thing about it. Before Mr. Polt left, he had invited every ESU Estonia member present at the event to the Independence Day reception held at his residence every year on July 4th. As well some support and help from the Embassy was promised and the idea of having such kind of events in the future was proposed by Tiiu Vitsut.

Then William O’Connor went on talking about himself and his work, why he had got interested in Estonia and learning Estonian, his impressions about the country and people, etc. The time flew very quickly because it was of a real interest and use for everyone. We had a nice opportunity to get to know more about each other. That’s the aim of the English-Speaking Union all over the world.



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