Please Be Polite! (Part 1)

I +once knew a guy from New Zealand (it's an extremely subtle mistake, barely noticeable -- it's just that we usually accompany "I knew [smb]..." with some sort of time reference. So you can also say "I knew a guy a few years ago...", "I used to know a guy...", "When I was younger/in school/living or working [smwhere], I knew [smb]", etc; basically some sort of reference to "mark" it in your life). His name was Andrew. He had been staying in Russia for one year on some kind of business when I first met him. Andrew didn't look like a foreigner - his face and the way he dressed didn't seem to say anything about his southern hemisphere background. And there was something else, something very special about him - Andrew spoke Russian without any accent! Of course, he couldn't speak as fast as normally we Russians do, but his pronunciation was just perfect. "How come you speak Russian so well?" I asked him on the very first day. He said that his best friend in high school was an immigrant from Russia. Andrew liked the Russian language, so they used it for their communication through all the school years ("all throughout school" seems more natural to me, but it might just be a personal preference) . "Wow, that's so amazing!" I marveled. "Your Russian is just perfect!". "Well, I'm not so sure now", he said with a wry smile. Then he told me what had happened to him only a couple of days before. (to be continued)

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Nice job, as usual! :)