First Private English Lesson

I just taught my first lesson. I could tell from the English used in emails what the woman would be like. It's kind of scary that I can tell someone's background this way just by what kind of broken English they use. Anyways, as I thought, it was a woman retiree who has a habit of learning English just cause, and not really to improve it. But I hope to change that; I would feel pretty guilty if our lessons have no impact on her abilities. She has studied for 7 years at a community center, and is still a bare beginner. Her latest teacher is a Peruvian that speaks English as a second language. So, as you can imagine, we have a long ways to go. I tried to have her read a small section of text (you can see what kind of site I found it on in my shared items today). That didn't work so well; she could hardly read the normal size font, and the words were a few syllables too long for her. I'll have to plan for that sort of thing in the future. She seemed resistant to this kind of book learnin' over all; being at a rather content stage that is probably no different than 7 years ago. I want to see if I can coax her out of her shell.
This is all pretty fascinating to me so far. Next week, I start group classes of old people, half of whom will be like this.
Oh yeah, and I don't know if it will happen every time, but she bought me lunch. Nice! Speaking of food, I bought a convection stove (just one burner but I have an American electric water boiler too so...) and it is fast! I cooked an egg in about 45 seconds this morning (faster than my gas range ever was). Glad I bought it. Maybe with a little more money, I can think about a fridge...