Buenas noches, y buena suerte.

(If you are here for ICLW, welcome, and please check out my little introduction here! And if you are not here specifically for ICLW, well, I would love for you to comment anyway.)

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Today was a day of a very sad goodbye, to a person as kind and gentle as he is étranger, as well as to a relationship that just couldn't endure, among other difficulties, the challenges that arise when one of its members is an étranger – an immigrant, an expatriate – and the other is not. 

I wanted to give him a present before he left, a memento of time shared and memories made and love not lost but rather forsaken and hopes for future happiness after the defeat of this blow. A book. I prefer to give only those that I've read and appreciated and find relevant to the situation, but even in the international bookstore, there wasn't much of a selection in his native language – and not speaking it myself, I couldn't very well choose something appropriate by reading the covers. So it came down to Harry Potter, the Millennium series, or Cien años de soledad. I went with the latter.

I'm not sure it was the best choice. I wish him anything but.

*The French word for a foreigner; literally, "stranger." For that negative connotation, it is a word greatly disliked by many such étrangers, myself included.

also available in French ... and English too!