PETE

In Paris, after our landing in Le Havre the previous summer, I’d swung through the rainy streets with a boy from our program named Pete—on our way to buy him an umbrella. He was an economics major—handsome and outgoing, with an amiable charm. From time to time during...

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LECHEROUS HAND

Rome wasn’t the only place I was anonymously harassed. One day in Madrid I found myself waiting for the subway at rush hour. As the doors of the train opened, I was swept into the car by the surge of the crowd—and someone pulled up my dress the moment before I got...

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FLUENT

At first I was too shy and insecure to speak much Spanish, afraid of making mistakes. I’d had three years less Spanish than the other students in my program, since I’d started out in French in junior high, as I've said, and I continued to have to struggle to...

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ASCETIC

Another thing that suited me about Spain, strange as it may sound, were the privations of my life there. The fact that there wasn’t always heat when you needed it—the government decreed the day the heat should be turned on for the winter and the day it should be...

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PRUNED

Like most Americans, I started out wildly frustrated with what I saw as the inefficiency and backwardness of the Spanish bureaucracy—you’d go to pick up a package at the post office and you’d have to wait for hours in line. I felt hampered, obstructed, thwarted at...

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SELF-MASTERY

Actually, there was another reason I'd decided to go to Spain, as important to me as becoming fluent in Spanish. I worried about being a burden to Britte—I had so much emotional baggage—and figured that striking out on my own was the fastest way I could grow the rest...

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