LETTERS FROM HOME: UNDERSTANDING THE VALUE OF BOTH A DEGREE AND A GOOD TIME

May 14, 199

Dear Pat,

Our Panamanian friend Carlos graduates from college Saturday. The job prospects in Central America aren't as bright as they are in the United States, but Carlos will return home with a prized degree and much better English skills than he had when he arrived. Then we had trouble holding the simplest conversations. Now we speak effortlessly, and the credit is all his.

Tall, handsome, headstrong Carlos was one of 12 Fulbright Scholars from Central America brought here two years ago to study at the university. Herbert, Veronica, Katia, Celia, Hector, Rueben, Balford, Karl, Dino, Karina, Karen and Carlos may indeed be the best and the brightest their countries have to offer. Indeed, imagine the difficulty of competing for grades in a second language.

But I was as impressed by their educated love of fun.

DC and I were Carlos' host family, available to help him adjust to living in America. There weren't many adjustments, really.

We warned him about the shining path of debt symbolized by the credit card an unemployed student from Central America can easily acquire. But we couldn't stop him from stumbling.

We helped him move when it became necessary, and it did. His first apartment was a dreary male clubhouse where the roommates' decorating ideas began and ended with a lone bikini calendar nailed to a wall.

"I don't like to be there," Carlos finally said.

We cautioned him about the new female American roommate who always seemed to be wearing only a T-shirt and panties when we dropped by the second, improved apartment. But he scoffed and we were wrong about her, or at least wrong to worry about Carlos.

The roommate did, however, get into a nasty hair-pulling fight with a downstairs neighbor. The cops were called but refused to take a side.

As we helped move him out of an apartment once again, a grinning Carlos pointed out a large hank of his roommate's hair hanging like a scalp on the refrigerator door.

His third apartment seemed to be an improvement until the phone was disconnected. The roommate with the new hairdo owed the phone company hundreds of dollars.

Carlos eventually figured out that there are some places you just can't live and some people you can't live with.

In every case, he took his medicine and his experiences in stride.

We had great fun together at a blues festival in Memphis and at a Latin American festival in Chicago, where Carlos fell instantly in love with a Panamanian dancer in native costume. But I think it was Panama he saw in that pretty girl's eyes.

The students did lots of traveling as a group -- to New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Houston, Memphis and Nashville besides trips to St. Louis and Kansas City -- and Carlos admitted to seeing the insides of more dance clubs than museums.

They know our metropolises and they know Cape Girardeau, but those I've asked are ready to go home to Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

We had a graduation and farewell party for Carlos last weekend, an American affair with burgers and potato salad and beer. The students quickly moved the coffee table into the foyer and rolled up the rug.

You wouldn't think Fulbright Scholars would know how to dance so well but these do. These are serious students who know the value of both a degree and a good time.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.