A Girl Scout troop in Arlington, Virginia, used some of their cookie sales to support the celebration on the mall. “We hosted some troops from Kansas, Pennsylvania and Florida,” says thirteen-year-old Annaliese Taylor. The money helped pay for their housing, food and registration costs. The fun they shared with other Girl Scouts was free.

(MUSIC)

New English Learners’ Blog

JUNE SIMMS: We started something new this week at voaspecialenglish.com. We call it "Confessions of an English Learner." It's a place for you to share funny or not-so-funny stories about language misunderstandings.

For example, Octave from Kigali, Rwanda, tells about a meeting where somebody was talking about a bridge between two districts. Instead of saying the bridge that those two districts are sharing, he said "the bridge that those two districts are shelling." That person was the chairman of the meeting!

J.C. Morales from Houston, Texas, remembers an experience after coming to the United States twenty-five years ago. J.C. writes, I was working at a McDonald's restaurant as a manager trainee. We were getting ready to celebrate a birthday for a customer's child. We ran out of balloons for the party, so the store manager asked me to go to a nearby store to buy some "globes" for that purpose. I followed her instructions, and I requested some gloves. When I got back to the restaurant, everybody was laughing at me. I felt ashamed for the misunderstanding. That is very common for non-native English speakers.