Follow the Nostalgic Smile
This morning I met with the chairperson of the linguistics department at a local university. I wanted to find out if their program was right for me, and perhaps more importantly, if I was right for their program. I honestly didn't know what to expect. So I set out from Miami Beach, with optimism in the passenger seat of my tiny egg-shaped hatchback, past downtown Miami and west along the Tamiami Trail to the main campus of FIU and my meeting with Dr. Feryal Yavas.
The dense air moistened my skin as I hoofed it from the parking garage to the Deuxieme Maison, where the linguistics program is housed. How fitting, I thought, that the buildings were given foreign words as names (and not just Spanish ones, as I've come to expect as the rule in Miami). I asked directions from a guy taking cover under the awning of the student union during a quick but torrential downpour. "Oh, you mean DM," he said, motioning for me to follow him as the shower turned to sprinkles and the s...