I studied Spanish for seven years and my favorite city in the world is Barcelona. While my Spanish is far from fluent these days, it’s still enough to get me through service interactions and daily life: ordering food, checking out at the grocery store, asking for directions. I kinda thought that if I was going to live abroad it would be in one of the dozens of countries where I already speak at least some of the official language (be it English or Spanish). And, before you say it, yes, many people in Berlin speak English. Earlier this month, I finished a 4-week beginners German class, and one of my…
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Fleeting Encounters Over Tea
There was an old woman listening in on our conversation. Or, maybe she wasn’t listening to us so much as simply noticing us. We were an odd-looking group, I suppose: two white women, barely older than teenagers, speaking jovial English with a Lebanese man in his early 30’s. We were in Perpignan at the time — a small city in Southern France. Noticeable, if not notable. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but we were in the courtyard of the Palais des Rois de Majorque (Palace of the Kings of Majorca). We smiled at the old woman when we noticed her noticing us, and she felt emboldened to…
