This is someone I did not know very well nevertheless came in contact with and heard about long after they were no longer around. I do not mean to say they were popular because they were not and I do not mean this in a negative way, that is simply the way it was, and I am sure they wouldn’t care if I stated this. I took this photo while we were aboard a train in Alsace France. It was Saturday sometime in September, and we were headed out to visit the city of Strasbourg. It was around nine in the morning, which explains the hard back lighting. At the time, we were sitting in a group of other students talking about clothes and cheek bones, and more similar things. I took a good number of photos of the group, and after a while of having my camera out, people stopped reacting to it, which is usually what I wait for in a situation. I do not know much about the girl in the photograph aside from the fact that she was a classical dancer, who I believe also sang a bit. Even though she spoke French well, she had to be the most quiet person I have known. Only replying with enough information to answer your question, and never volunteering conversation. Another student from Mexico said he liked her, because quiet personality made her mysterious to him, and there was something irresistible about her modest persona.
She was studying abroad in France from Italy and only a month into her program she returned to Italy saying she was not being challenged enough academically.
While this very well might have been true, I personally suspected she was returning at least in part because she was not well accepted by the other Italians in the program. One group of Italians, The Italian Faction, as I came to call them during the course of my stay, drew a circle for themselves which left number of their fellow countrymen without a group to call their own. Whether this was done on purpose, or had malicious intent, I do not know but with those who were excluded it did not bode well. But this intentional or inadvertent action created another group of independent Italians with whom I came to know well.












