From One Coffee Fanatic to Another

I love coffee. Not only do I love the way it smells and tastes, but I love coffee shop culture. Spending an afternoon curled up in a cosy cafe with a good book, and a perfectly made cappuccino is my idea of heaven. And I am not alone.

In 2011 people consumed 7,358,897 metric tons of coffee. To help put this into perspective, 1 metric ton equals 1000 kilograms (a small car weighs about 1000 kilograms). That’s A LOT of coffee! Canadians are one of the top consumers of coffee in the world. Perhaps that explains why I love it so much.

In April of this year, a student (Maki) joined imagine* who was getting ready to move to New York for three years. In one of our first lessons she told me that she was a coffee lover (a woman after my own heart!), and that her dream was to order a soy latte from Starbucks in English. I’ve had the experience of ordering a coffee in another language and not getting what I wanted, so I could understand why it was important for her to get the order right.

A perfect example of how confusing ordering a coffee can be is ‘black coffee’. In some places when you order a black coffee, it means coffee with no sugar or milk. On the other hand, in some places a black coffee has sugar in it! To be safe you should always ask for “a black coffee with no sugar”. As you can see ordering a coffee in a foreign country can be a daunting task, and when you start getting into specialty coffees that’s when things can get really confusing!

After just a month of taking two English lessons almost every day Maki was on her way to New York. She had practiced everything from asking for directions to talking about her hometown, and most importantly ordering a soy latte! One of the things that differ from ordering at Starbucks in Japan is having to give your name when you order. The staff write your name on your cup so that they don’t give your order to another customer by accident. So we made sure to practice that while ordering.

In the first few days of her new life in New York Maki had successfully answered all of the questions at immigration, visited the famous Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Yankee Stadium, and was even asked for directions by a New Yorker! During all of her adventures she made her first visit to Starbucks and in her words “I ordered the soy latte at STARBUCKS.”

So from one coffee fanatic to another, well done Maki! I knew that you could do it.