What difficulties do the daughters face in their new country?

The daugters have so many more social and sexual freedoms in America that they are not used to. Yolanda, for example, describes one of her first English classes, in which she came over-prepared and felt out of place; she refers to feeling like an "immigrant" or "greenhorn." This feeling is linked to her lack of social experience, her awkwardness with the English language and her family's idiosyncrasies. Rudolf Brodermann Elmenhurst, the third, is the only student absent from the class, and she feels a connection with this unknown person because he, too, seems an outsider.