Arnold Falvo:  

Life truly began after graduating from Pitt in French and Italian Literature. I went to Africa as a member of the Peace Corps to "see the world" AND to see if my education in the French language would amount to anything practical other than teaching high school French in Pittsburgh. In Dakar, Senegal, West Africa, our group of forty volunteers were the first ever to be trained in country. I was placed in the Merchant Marine academy in the capital to teach sailors, navigators and captains. It was great fun and every boys' dream to be in the harbor sailing into the sunset while teaching maritime English in French. Summer vacations were spent traveling all over West Africa by train, truck, boat, raft, plane, horse carriage and even camel ..Sadly a lot of those places I visited then would be dangerous to revisit today. I could never have imagined living in the very heart of cosmopolitan Dakar. My apartment had all the modern conveniences even a garbage chute and elevator. So, after two years of this "bourgeois life style" (Remember, I was a naive French Literature major who wanted to be a rough and tough Peace Corps volunteer.) I wanted a change of life style at a slower pace and in a quieter place. I was able to move to Bignona (not even one traffic light in the whole town). Yes, life was great in the tropical Casamance region. I thrived in the lush south with its deserted beaches, trails that meander through friendly villages and picturesque rice fields framed by palms, mangoes and guavas trees . I could have vegetated there for a long time.. But enough was enough. After four years of fun mastering Wolof (the national language) in the capital and Jolla (the language of the largest ethnic group in the Casamance), it dawned on me (duh) that my linguistic abilities were not limited to just Romance languages and its aromatic women. So, I decided to study linguistics in graduate school. This way I could follow the endless summer either in the middle east, South America or in Africa again as a language teacher But fate ...(there is no such thing as coincidence) .. had other plans for me. Because of an ill-fated close cultural encounter of the worst kind, a totally mystifying Japanese girl in grad school drew me to Tokyo. I just had to figure out what made this enigmatic chic tick. She had more layers than an onion and I tried to peel my way done to the core! I gave up when all I was left with just shriveled up pieces. Blooming onions in the outback are much more satisfying. Little MS. Kansai Perplex stayed behind in the States and taught at the University of Oregon unti...Expand for more