When you were surprised to meet a friend

IELTS Cue Card/ Candidate Task Card 409 with Model Answer:

Describe a situation when you were surprised to meet a friend.

You should say:

• when it was
  
• who this friend was
• where you met this friend

and explain why you were surprised to meet this friend.

[You will have to talk about the topic for one to two minutes. You have one minute to think about what you are going to say. You can make some notes to help you if you wish.]

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Model Answer:

Thank you for this interesting cue card topic. I would be more than happy to describe a situation here when I was really surprised to meet a friend of mine, about whom, I thought, I knew very well.

It all happened about a few years ago when I went to attend a Canadian university in order to complete my post-graduation degree. I shared this plan of mine with almost all of my friends and relatives. I am pretty sure that I told about attending a Canadian university to this particular friend of mine as well, but little did I know that this friend of mine was also planning to attend a Canadian university.

By the way, this friend of mine, named “Parvez”, and I attended the same university in order to complete our Bachelor degree. We were studying different subjects, but we still became good friends because we lived in the same dormitory, next to each other’s room.  

Anyway, after arriving in Canada, I naturally got very busy with my life, classes, homework, grocery shopping, cooking and doing laundry, in addition to learning about the area where I was living. In fact, I was so busy for the first couple of weeks, after arriving in Canada, that I managed to call my parents only once to say “hello”. Then, suddenly, one late afternoon, I noticed that someone, who looked exactly like “Parvez”, was coming towards me when I was taking a quick snack at our university cafeteria. Initially, I thought that he was just someone who looked like him, but when I watched him a bit carefully, I became so startled that I choked on my food in my mouth.

Anyway, I became so astounded to see him because he never really told me before about his intention or plan to go abroad in order to study, even though, I thought that we were good friends.  I was very surprised also because I never thought of him as a person who could stay away from his family. Finally, meeting someone so close at a far away from home was somewhat surprising.