Knew several, dated one. The one guy was a bit of a douche, but the one girl was cool. Both of those were from Germany, different parts.

There was a girl from Milan that was awesome. Just one of those people that’s able to make anything fun.

Those, however, were in a higher grade than I was at the time, so there wasn’t as much interaction.

In my junior year, there was a girl from Madrid in my grade. She and a girl I had dated that was from Mexico City were both in the same Spanish class I was taking. Kind of a chance for them to work on more conversational English, and for us americans to have native speakers to talk to. What it ended up being was two kids that spoke Spanish so fast and so well, with slang and accents that the teacher couldn’t keep up with that it was a comedy. The girl I had dated wasn’t an exchange student, she had immigrated with her parents, and was a citizen by that point. And they didn’t always get along, what with the cultural divide and differing personalities, but the teacher was such a twatwaffle that they had more fun screwing with her than arguing lol. But the Spanish girl was really nice. Went out of her way to help other students, and put up with my bad spanish that was part the Castilian that we learned in class, part the stuff the girl I had dated taught me, and all done with a southern accent.

There was also a guy from France that year, but I never had any real interaction with him. Seemed decent from what I heard about him, and he was certainly friendly.

But then, there’s Junko. We shared an art class. She was Japanese. She was also a bit of a metalhead, and an amazing artist. She blew away everyone, including the teacher, on any project we did. Just astounding skill, and wildly creative with it. She ended up sitting between me and a friend of mine just randomly at the start of the year, and a few days later when we both had on band shirts, started gushing about Iron Maiden. She brought in her painting of Eddie, a slightly modified version of the somewhere in time album cover.

So, it was on. The three of us would sit there working on whatever, talking about music.

Which led into me and her working on a project together. A sculpture of Eddie lol but it was fun, and it was a long project we were expected to work on outside of school.

We liked each other a lot. After the project, it just turned into us hanging out pretty much any time her host family was okay with it. At some point, a few months in, we’re sitting in class joking about my dad greeting her in bad Japanese every time she comes over (he was stationed on Okinawa during his army stint) when someone asked if we were dating. I was not aware that we were, but Junko just piped up with a yes and kissed my cheek.

Apparently, she like, like liked me. I did her as well but at the time I was about as clueless as it gets. I can’t say it was love, but she did make my heart do funny things when she’d laugh, which was often.

So, the rest of the year, we dated a bit more intentionally. The closer it got to the end of the year, though, we knew it was going to end, and we also knew it wasn’t something that was long term enough to make any kind of plans. So that was pretty much it. By the time she went home, it was essentially just friendship with occasional kissing. But there was a deeper affection, we just didn’t pursue it. She wasn’t moving here, I wasn’t moving there, so no point in letting things get too involved, you know?

We did exchange letters for a few years, though that petered out until email became a thing got each other’s addresses and kept in touch that way off and on. She had called my dad to find me. It’s been a few years since we last communicated though.