You ought not go over there. Ain’t no telling what could happen to you.”
That’s how an aunt warned me when I decided to study abroad. The decision wasn’t surprising because I had a lifelong fascination with foreign languages. But in Siler City, about fifty miles southwest of Durham, I had nearly exhausted the opportunities to use them. It was a shock to both my community and me that I found myself going, with an actual passport and airline ticket, over a big, real ocean.
“But do you even speak Paris?” a cousin asked that summer night after my freshman year before I left for France.
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