"Are you my friend?" I looked into his serious brown eyes and burst out laughing. We were in the middle of our English lesson and I had constructed a role playing session that I thought was going rather well. Isaac had wanted to talk about cars and after studying the vocabulary for interior and exterior parts of a car, we were now acting out a customer/ mechanic scenario.
I wasn't actually sure at first if he got the idea that we were imagining. After several stops and starts, I felt like the situation was pretty clear. I was the customer, whose car had broken down a few kilometers away from Isaac's garage. He successfully called for a tow truck and began to ask me diagnostic questions. Eventually I asked him how much all of the repairs would cost.
And that's when he asked if we were friends. Because how could he determine a fair price without really knowing the depth of our imaginary relationship. Ah yes, the inevitable role of culture in play.
