Don’t touch the apples

For fifteen years I have taken classes of college students abroad. We spend three weeks in Paris and then three weeks either in Italy or in Spain. Their aspirations are varied, but many want to work in some international context, either at the UN or in business or in religion. Immersing themselves in a foreign environment, tasting the tastes, learning the rules, acquiring the language, knowing something as basic as how to order food and wine in a restaurant are deemed, wisely, to be essential to those bold aspirations. I recall a student returning one afternoon, in tears. She had innocently touched a piece of fruit in a small greengrocer’s shop. A taboo. The outraged shopkeeper had expelled her from his shop.

LDN