PSU Magazine Summer 1988

_,, pin 7d State summer students '.). I Hardiman left Portland a week early last summer, met a Spanish foreign exchange student on the plane and spent a week with him and his family in Tarragona, a coastal city south of Barcelona. During the long flight and layovers, "Oriol would practice his English on me and I would answer him back in Spanish," remembers Hardiman. The two became good friends and when the PSU program was over, Hardiman went back to Oriol's, this time with his mother who had flown over from Gladstone to join him. Hardiman has a suitcase full of these stories, ones of being befriend– ed by the Spanish people. "When you ask for directions in Spain often the person will personally take you there and buy you a beer on the way," says Hardiman. He compares Madrid to New York City, "except with a bunch of friendly people." Romey also remembers incidents of welcome he and his students have experienced through the years, but, maybe for entertainment's sake, he Professor David Romey enjoys telling the "things-gone– wrong" stories better. "Cada dia hay un desastre - Every day there is a disaster." This is a phrase he and Ken Wallace began exchanging with rolled eyes on the very first trip in 1968. Wallace, a high school Spanish in– structor, was in on Romey's maiden trip and went back again in 1985. Maybe they coined this phrase because of the never-arriving telegram telling Romey when Wallace would arrive, or the out-of– gas bus in the middle of nowhere, but chances are it was because of the pneumonia that hospitalized Romey for 10 days on that first trip. Once he was past that first year, Romey found, with enthusiasm and a sense of humor, the summer ses– sions got better. "There is a special bond the class abroad cements," he says. This must be the case, because Romey even remembers the problem students fondly. Such as the year of Sylvia. Romey has said he "forgets the years and remembers them by students." That year everything that could happen, would , to Sylvia. She lost a contact lens somewhere in Spain and in a myopic stumble on the bus steps found it again under her hand. And there was the trip North to see a castle. The bus driver missed a ~ 15 • z < ::;: 0 "' < J: z J: 0 ...., The bull fights in Madrid and a less serious moment for Hardiman 's sister Jill. z < ::;: 0 " · < J: z :i: 0 ....,