To improve her speaking Spanish, she signed up for a language school in rural Guatemala, where she lived for three months with a local family. This was an eye-opening experience. Her hosts were very poor. Their diet was almost entirely based on corn and beans, with a little bit of chicken or pork consumed once or twice a week. Yet they were generally happy, warm, and welcoming, and they freely shared what little they had with her. It was a remarkable contrast with her other world, the elite private schools populated by stressed-out, self-centered superachievers. A world of solidarity and
...more
