As a good Chilean, I had travelled to USA with two 5-liter bottles. One of red and one of white wine.

A couple from Puerto Rico that I had met at the cafeteria invited me one afternoon for dinner. They enjoyed laughing at my Castilian Spanish from Chile, and my Andres Bello influenced grammar.

At dinner we talked about our traditions and I told them about the Chilean wine I had brought and offered to bring some next time for dinner. To my total amazement, they told me that in Athens, Georgia, it was not possible to buy alcohol, and if my wine was discovered in my room, I would run the risk of being expelled.

I carefully thought about what I could do about this because by no means was I going to loose the precious wine.

So one day right after lunch at the Cafeteria, I convinced my Chilean roommate to watch for the hall to be free of people and I managed to sneak the huge bottle of red wine out of the dorm and took it to the apartment of my Puerto Ricans friends.

As for the big bottle of white wine, I carefully took out the label with a razor blade and then replaced it with a discrete typewritten label that said “Urine”. I then placed the bottle in the refrigerator of the common kitchen at the dorm.

Little by little the “urine” went down and when it was all finished, I converted the 5 liter bottle in a nice lamp.