Bus Stop Crazies
There are always international students waiting at my bus stop. I find this to be odd, because Winthrop (my town) seems like an out-of-the-way place for a young Japanese person to come live in for a semester. It isn't near a university (which is already odd for Boston) and it is not on the subway line. Instead, one must get off the subway in East Boston and take a shuttle from there into our town. Nevertheless, every day when I get out of work and arrive at the bus stop, there are invariably several foreign students already waiting. Japanese kids are probably the most numerous, their concentration divided between their books and electronic translators. Arabic students also make up a decent contingent, though they usually congregate in small groups where they talk and laugh loudly in their native tongues. But on any given day, you might run into Italian, Frenchman, or Argentinian students waiting for the ride to town. Often, I can't help but watch these students are they sit,...