On my first day, I walked into the classroom and saw this kid sitting in the back row laughing.

He looked at me from across the classroom and began waving for me to come over and sit next to him. He must have heard that I was from America. From the looks of the kid, I had a feeling that sitting next to him might lead to trouble. I didn’t know what to do.

There I was standing in front of a full classroom, the teacher not in the room yet. These were my very first moments ever at a school in Argentina—everything around me seemed so strange. I had to make a decision. I welcomed his invitation and took my seat. His name was Sergio, and he later became my best friend throughout the rest of my time in high school.

My school, Instituto Ricardo Rojas, was located in a tranquil, sunny suburban neighborhood called Cerro de las Rosas, which means Hill of Roses. It was surrounded by beautiful homes all in a row, with flower gardens, orange and grapefruit trees blossoming, the type of homes that you might see in Italy.

As my first day of class was underway, I was looking out the classroom window next to my desk, and I could see a house that had metal shutters with bullet holes in them. The houses surrounding it were all lovely homes with cars parked in the driveways; you could tell families lived in them. But this one house had bullet holes in the shutters.

Using my broken Spanish and hand gestures, I asked Sergio, "Why does that house have those bullet holes?"

"Well, a few years back, there was this girl with a machine gun in the house who would not surrender to the police, so there was a standoff. The girl was a university student, and part of the communist guerrilla movement blowing things up and trying to take over the country," Sergio explained.

"A university student?" I asked.

"Yes, and her dad was a doctor and well off," Sergio continued. "She had been holed up in her house with a machine gun and refused to surrender, so one day the military drove a tank up this street. She was shooting at them from that window up there, so they blew her away."

I couldn't believe what Sergio just recounted. He said it very matter-of-factly, unfazed.

Only 90 days earlier I had been in Darien, Connecticut, watching reruns of "The Brady Bunch."

"So how long ago did this happen?" I asked.

"Maybe two or three years ago."

"How come they haven't replaced the shutters by now?"

"Because no one lives there—it's empty."

"Well, why not?"

"After that happened, no relatives wanted to say they knew the girl or the family, or claim the property, for fear of being associated with the girl's guerrilla network and being "disappeared." It's been empty ever since."