When Garfield sophomore Jake Kennelly first arrived at the Aldea International Global Village Summer Camp at the University of Washington, a three-week-long overnight program for Spanish and American students, he was disappointed. The female students from Spain were not as he had imagined. He had expected beautiful, evenly tanned, 17-year-old partiers. In reality, he said, most of them were “Green Day-loving, Twilight-reading” high school freshmen. Some of them even wore fanny packs with Twilight quotes on them.

Luckily, one girl stood out from the crowd. Carmen*, the oldest Spanish girl at the camp, was 17. Within the first week, the linguistically-inclined pair found themselves alone in an empty corridor, à la Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley.

“We went to an empty floor of Hagget Hall,” Jake said. “We made out there for 15 minutes.”

The next day, Carmen abruptly ended the fling. She said there was “too much pressure,” and “too many people” knew what was going on.

“They [the Spanish students] came on government grants,” Jake said. “Our exploits were being recorded in the town newspaper back in Spain.”

While Carmen fretted about losing her grant and ruining her reputation, Jake nursed his wounds in the dorms.

“For the next two days, I was heartbroken,” he said. “I played a lot of guitar.”

From afar, he noticed that Carmen was paying a suspicious amount of attention to Rodrigo*, her guy friend from Spain. Yet she still insisted that the two were just friends. After Jake witnessed Rodrigo pinching Carmen’s upper thighs, he concluded that people in Spain are more intimate with friends of the opposite gender.

Jake and Carmen got back together toward the end of the three weeks. When they had to say goodbye on the last day, Carmen was upset.

“I thought this was just like a summer thing but she was sobbing and distraught,” Jake said.

Jake isn’t the only Garfield student who has learned about foreign sexuality first-hand. Many other Bulldogs have returned from trips abroad with newfound knowledge of international attitudes toward romance and sex.

Okoye Berry, a senior at Garfield who traveled to Cuba this summer, remarks that Cubans seem much more open about doin’ tha nasty than Americans and are sometimes so open that they have trouble remembering to wear clothes. As a foreigner in Cuba, he experienced the forwardness of some natives firsthand.

“‘You want sex?’ might be the only English words they know,” he said, “If you’re American, it’s like $ signs come into their eyes. They will [d]uck you in a minute, maybe just to rob you.”

It’s possible that teenage sex is less frowned upon in Cuban society because people come of age earlier; there a sixteen year-old qualifies as an adult. Because of this, late teens/adults have much more open conversations with their parents about (gulp) sex. Indeed, Cuban parents probably don’t rudely wait until their children are fifteen to explain that storks did not actually play a vital role in their births (unless your name’s Zoe).

However, it seems that although Cubans are much more comfortable discussing/having sex, a double standard similar to one in America still exists.

“Guys are always gonna get high 5s; girls get a kick in the [tush],” says Okoye.

A thousand miles away, junior Cally Shine has born witness to some Irish attitudes towards sexual activity. Cally says Irish boys tend to be very forward, at least with American girls. While staying in Ireland she received many flirtatious texts like “so you’re the yank.”

She says that although the older Catholic generations regard sexual expression more strictly, the dirty deed has become much more acceptable with younger generations.

“I think it’s a little more okay to be slutty in Ireland, from my impressions,” she says.

Cally has a cousin who became pregnant at age seventeen and an aunt who was incredibly supportive to her impregnated daughter. Another one of her cousins lost her virginity at the age of 13.

Rhonda*, a former Garfield student who now does full-time Running Start, traveled to Norway during her junior year.

“Relationships and the sexual aspects of relationships in Norway, at least to me, seemed a lot more respectful,” Rhonda said. “Granted, there are still many random hookups, but it became really clear that relationships are taken very slowly and there is a lot of patience regarding sexual activities. Also, I found it really bizarre that couples that begin in the last year or so of their high school are typically expected to get married.”

The dynamics of Garfield’s senior class would change significantly if couples within the class were expected to get married.

Some people explore the world; some people explore their sexuality. Students at Garfield explore both at the same time, and they have discovered with certainty that sex does exist in other countries.
*Name has been changed.