Anyone for tennis?

Last year, during a one-month stint in Manaus, I decided to spend part of my weekends at tennis lessons. Most everyone I work with has been playing for years, and while I enjoy the game for exercise and companionship, I'd never taken a lesson, and "winging it" hadn't been very effective up to that point. I snared a private instructor and a court reservation at the academia de tênis. The court was located outdoors, and with the tropical heat rising to the upper 30s C (90s F) by mid-morning, I started my lessons at 7am Saturday and Sunday. Since we always contract a driver, Monteiro, to get around (there is very little public transportation in Manaus), and he and I get along quite well--despite my lack of Portuguese and his rudimentary English--he got a racquet from the instructor and joined the lessons. It was good to have another beginner to lob the ball back and forth, and drills work better with more than one person; plus, it was just fun to hang out with Monteiro.
Since my lessons, I've only had the chance to play tennis a handful of times, but Monteiro has become an avid player. He gets together with friends every weekend to play for two hours, and has joined our weekend games as a regular member as well. He's gotten quite good at the game in fact. The irony of all this is that, originally, he took me to play soccer and gave me some tips on how to pass and shoot. I played with a group of his friends a few weekends and enjoyed being part of a particularly Brazilian pastime. However, sometimes I had to skip soccer because I was too tired from playing tennis, so there was some contention for us between the two sports. Monteiro is a big fan of soccer (particularly, the team Flamengo) and has been playing the game his whole life, but with a knee injury some years ago, and turning 40 recently, he decided that he would forgo soccer and switch to tennis as his sport of choice.
So as we said our goodbyes the other day, at the end of our project, we exchanged kind words and hopes to stay in touch. Then he thanked me for introducing him to tennis and he would always remember that. It makes me glad to know that when Monteiro plays tennis with his friends, he'll remember our lessons on those mercury-rising weekend mornings, driving to the tennis academy with the Brazilian rock band Pitty or my Chris Cornell CD blaring on the car stereo. Or exhausted but full of adrenaline after the lesson, dropping by the sandy beach along the Amazon River to get some coconut juice and hang out by the port.