During a trip to Morocco, a writer meets a young boy destined for a tragic, inescapable life on the stage at the Dancing Boy.

A high school boy makes a habit of stealing cars, picking up girls, and skipping school. When he begins to worry that he is getting into too much trouble, the boy must decide whether to seek help or continue his criminal lifestyle.

A white American man and a Chinese-American woman visit the woman's family in China. After the woman's cousin compares the woman's Chinese to a toddler's, she stops speaking English and decides she wants to stay in China for awhile before returning, to reconnect with her family and her place of birth. Upon returning to the United States alone, the man, initially disinterested and unmotivated, begins to learn Chinese.

A second-generation Russian immigrant living in contemporary Michigan finds himself caught up in a sad but emotive group of friends when he takes a continuing education course on Intermediate German.

When a man visits an old village called Ain Tadouirt to visit an old friend and conduct research, he becomes captured by a tribe and forced to entertain. He must figure out how to escape a life of enslavement in a foreign land.

A U.S state department official encounters an infatuation on his trip to Eastern Europe that ends in despair.

A young Native American man visits a burial site on a nearby island and must reflect on both his allegiance to his culture and to himself.

During his travels in the Pacific, a young man hears tales of a great adventurer. When he returns home and relays the news to his father, he discovers a long-kept secret.

A young American man now living in Europe reflects upon his upbringing and the deaths of his parents. As he reminisces, he must decide whether he should stay in his new life or return to America.

A young man invites a tourist to his favorite London café and recounts the strangest affair he’d ever had with a woman he picked up there; a woman who challenged and changed him. A young, beguiling man picks a tourist out of a group and invites him to see the real sites of London, not the tired and disappointing spectacles. He takes the tourist to the Café de Paris, an old but grand establishment with the promise of dancing and young ladies. The man admonishes his companion to loosen up, stay and drink, and while they wait for the evening to unfold the man begins a story.