Escape From the Desert: A Symphony of Adolescence

Summary

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Editor's note: Escape from the Desert is a series detailing Alexi Horowitz's time as a foreign exchange student in Spain. This is the fifth installment.

The fire rages on, dark, obscured Spanish adolescents file by the fire pit, tossing in scraps of wood presumably stolen from nearby construction sites. I sit with my back facing the old fortress walls that enclose this small part of La Caleta beach. In front of me, more than 40 kids sit in a large circle around the blaze, half of them foreign-exchange students and half our Spanish friends from around the city. Behind them are the crashing white waves of the dark Atlantic.

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Escape From the Desert: A Symphony of Adolescence

This is mass confusion. German swear words fly into the night, returned with apologies in English and jokes and giggles in Hungarian. Our group of exchange students ...

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