The New York Times has a nice selection of videos, Vows, where a number of couples comment on the way they met. On 11 April we posted the story of Marguerite and Sean. Today it is Erica and Mathew who tell us how they met.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below. The activity is suitable for Intermedio 2 students.
1 What newspaper helped Erica and Mathew meet?
2 How does Howaboutwe.com work?
3 What made so many people want to check the site on 4th July?
4 How long did it take them to set up their first date after exchanging some phone calls and emails?
5 Who arrived first at the meeting point?
6 What happened at the very end of their first date?
7 What did Erica quickly notice about Mathew?
8 When did Mathew propose to Erica?
9 What time was the meal? What was the problem?
10 How did Mathew propose?
You can check your answers by reading the transcript below.
Hi I’m Matt.
And I’m Erica.
And this is how we met.
Erica and I met because of The New York Times actually.
I read an article in The New York Times about recent trends in dating and the source for the article was this new dating website called Howaboutwe.com. The interesting thing about How about we was that you actually propose the ideas of things you want to do so, how about we go to the movies, how about we check out this wine bar.
I had a free counting site to Howaboutwe.com when it first started. There was not so many people, not so many profiles and certainly nothing that called my interest. And then on 4th July I got contacted by the site saying they crashed because of the traffic from The New York Times article that they were just being flooded with people wanting to check out the site.
So I decided I should go back on, took a look at a few profiles and Erica really caught my eye and I think the reason why is that we had picked the same date.
I suggested walking the High Line.
I contacted Erica through the site. We exchanged a couple of emails back and forth and then we had a couple of phone calls and about a week or two later we set up for our first date.
Matt suggested we that meet at a near by bar, in a bar called Honey. We I got there Matt was actually there having a beer and I got a glass of wine. We talked for a bit and it turned out great, so we decided to go on High Line as planned.
We went for a walk on the High Line, had a wonderful time, towards the very end it actually started raining, had to run for duck for cover, which was kind of fun.
And then at the end of walking the High Line we got down to this standard Biergarten, and we got there it wasn´t really our scene, so we left and I suggested the Diner right nearby.
One thing I noticed fairly quickly about Matt was that he kept coming up with all these great ideas and great suggestions, so as we were talking in the Diner he said there was this great bar that he loved down the street called The Other Room. We had some drinks, and talked and time just flew.
Which was great but it was time to head home he dropped me off and I heard from him a few days later so it began.
So about a year and a half later I decided to propose to Erica and I thought it would be really fun to do it on the High Line. I made reservations for The Standard Grill.
We went to the restaurant for our seven o’clock reservation and we were quickly told by the hostess that we were mistaken and there was no seven o’clock reservation. So I suggested, well, let’s go for a walk on the High Line.
And I said Wow! What a great idea! So we went on the High Line, walked around a little bit, went back to a place where we had spent a lot of time on our first date.
And Matt went down on one knee…
And I proposed. And she said yes.
All along I never suspected anything, so, and we met our parents, had a saludatory dinner, and then joined some friends down at the bar The Other Room where we had gone on our first date. And that’s our beginning.
And that’s how we met.
