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Showing posts from March, 2012

Around the World in Baltimore

March 8 It was a weekend of accents, languages, beautiful women from Russia and smooth talkers from South America. It was a weekend of making connections, that spun out from our minds and fingers as we shook hands in the hotel lobby, or the fancy elevator with a clear glass ceiling (“always makes me feel like superman!” a girl from Sweden said), or in some windy street of Baltimore. From more than70 different countries, we all bonded over our majors, similarities in languages (so many Spanish speakers and so many Arabic speakers; everyone knew how to talk in English but if you met someone who knew your language, you were determined to exhaust your language’s vocabulary), and our exasperation with Americans using Fahrenheit for weather temperatures while everyone else, from Portugal to Bangladesh, felt hot and cold in Celsius. Everywhere else it is football but in America it must be soccer. And no, it is not a world series if the only country that is playing is yours – and sometime