Most students return from their Foreign Studies Programs with great photographs and neat T-shirts. But Blake Zidell '99 returned from his Spanish FSP in Buenos Aires, Argentina with something a bit more substantial -- a girlfriend, Florencia Lernoud.
"It had become this legendary thing," Zidell said about his bringing Lernoud back with him from Argentina. He said he had blitzed a friend at the College from Buenos Aires, and it seemed everyone already knew about her by the time they came back.
He said the first day he returned to Hanover, he walked into Lou's Restaurant and saw the woman who cuts his hair at Makin' Waves, and she asked about Lernoud.
The meeting
Zidell met Lernoud through Jon Sullivan '99, another Dartmouth student on the FSP.
Sullivan, who is from California, said a friend of his mother's is Lernoud's aunt. He said Lernoud called him a few weeks into the trip.
"She was really nice -- she showed me around Buenos Aires for a bit," Sullivan said. "Then one time I went out with her and Blake to a cafe, and they seemed to hit it off."
Zidell said they all stayed talking in the cafe until 5 a.m., and Sullivan and Zidell had classes that morning.
A few weeks later, the FSP students had a week free of classes. Most students used the time to travel, but Zidell said he planned to stay in Buenos Aires working with a playwright.
The night before other FSP students left for the airport, Zidell and a few friends went out with Lernoud once again.
"They all left at three in the morning for the airport, but [Lernoud] and I stayed out until 12:30 noon," he said.
Zidell said he and Lernoud "hung out all the time" over the week-long break. "One of those nights she said something like, 'Oh, I can't believe you're leaving' or something," Zidell said. "I made a joke about checking her with my luggage."
Even though he was mostly joking at the time, Zidell started thinking about the possibility of Lernoud visiting him in the States. "My father had a bazillion free travel miles, so I asked him," he said.
Surprisingly, his father was supportive, and even said he would make up the difference for a plane ticket for Lernoud if he did not have enough free travel miles.
Within a week, Zidell said, his father had made travel arrangements for Lernoud, who had only been to the U.S. once -- to Florida for three weeks.
But Lernoud had to decide if she would really be able to leave home for three months. She had been taking classes in Buenos Aires, studying "diseno industrial," which Zidell admitted he does not really understand, other than "it incorporates a lot of things."
Bored with her "amorphous major," Zidell said Lernoud had decided to take some time off from her schooling to reevaluate her choice of study, and they discussed her coming to the U.S. with him many times.
One night at a bus stop, Lernoud was drawing on Zidell's hand. "I looked down, and she had written 'me voy,'" which means, "I'll go."
Lernoud needed a visa to leave the country, and although she received an automatic 90-day Visa, she was unable to get an extension.
"So Sept. 5 is it," he said.
On foreign soil
After the FSP, Lernoud and Zidell went to his home in Dallas, Tex. for a week, then came to Dartmouth.
He said she studied English in high school, but "she was taught more to read, not conversational English." Lernoud understands English, but chooses to speak mostly in Spanish to Zidell.
He said they have no communication problems, although sometimes he has to ask her to repeat things.
"She got a book on English, she's been studying that," he said.
Zidell, a comparative literature major, has studied Spanish for six years.
Zidell is taking Spanish 71 this term, and Lernoud is auditing the course. "It is a small class, but a lot of work," he said. "She has already finished all the reading."
He said she spends a lot of time reading on the Green or on benches on Main Street, and because of her outgoing personality, she meets a lot of people. "Guys want to meet her," he added.
Accustomed to the city life of Buenos Aires, Lernoud was surprised to see how early Hanover closes down at night, Zidell said. She also has surprised him with some of her city behavior.
Zidell said late one night -- actually about 4 or 5 a.m. -- she leaned out the window of their apartment above the Dirt Cowboy Cafe to yell down at some students she had met before.
Although she was speaking in Spanish, Zidell said they understood her and spoke back in English. "They asked what she was doing up and if she was having a party," he said.
He said the guys asked her to come downstairs, then offered to come up. They started begging her to come down, "and they said they would take their pants off if she went downstairs," he said.
The guys dropped their pants, but Lernoud stayed in the apartment.
Zidell said it is interesting to notice things about Americans when a foreigner points them out.
He said Lernoud has asked him why people wear their baseball hats backwards when it does not protect their eyes from the sun.
"It's funny to listen to her read our culture," Zidell said. "At some point you realize, 'It is sort of stupid how we do that.'"
Since college students in Argentina live at home with their families, Zidell said Lernoud was apalled at the conditions in which college students in the U.S. live. He said she spent three days cleaning his apartment.
He said she will never get used to the smell of fraternity basements, but she loves to watch people play pong.
Interestingly enough, Zidell met another Dartmouth student this summer who has a story similar to his.
Jennifer Vines '98 said she met her boyfriend, a native of Mexico, Winter term, 1996 when she was the Apprentice Teacher on a Language Study Abroad program in Mexico.
"We kept in touch for nine months [after I left Mexico]", Vines said. "I spent Christmas and New Years down there."
She said her boyfriend came up to the United States in May, and he has been traveling along the East Coast and staying with her since then.