Section 1 (The Soup): Marji has just arrived in Vienna. She starts at a boarding house run by nuns and wondering what her roommate, Lucia, will be like. She then says why she was at the boarding house and not with her mother's friend, Zozo. She then tells what happened at Zozo's house. She didn't seem to like Marji much and there was a lot of fighting between Zozo and her husband. Plus, her daughter, Shirin, isn't like Marji remembers her and Marji doesn't like the new Shirin. When she arrives at the boarding house, a nun shows her around. She then experiences the freedom she now has by going shopping for her own food. When she returns, she meets her roommate. Lucia speaks German so Marji doesn't understand her until they were eating some soup and they found a way to communicate by writing out what they meant as pictures. The section ended by both girls watching a movie in the TV room and Marji leaves.
Section 2 (Tyrol): Marji starts the section with complaining about Lucia waking her up every morning at 6:30 with her hair dryer. A little after that, Marji starts to make friends at school when she gets the highest grade on a math test. She also becomes very popular for her unflattering portraits of teachers. Later, she is introduced to people who become her friends. They talk about what they are going to do during their Christmas break, which makes Marji feel left out because she doesn't celebrate Christmas and the Iranian New Year isn't until March. She goes back to her room and tells Lucia how she feels. Lucia offers to take her to her home town over the holiday to meet her parents. She went to the evening mass and had dinner with them.
Section 3 (Pasta): The next break, Marji listens to her friends' plans for winter break and comes up with her own excuse for what she is going to do: read. She spends her break reading and eating pasta. One evening she makes a big potful of spaghetti and goes down to eat it in the public TV room at her boarding house. One of the nuns tells her off for eating out of a pot, and then insults her for being Iranian, saying that Iranians have no education. Marji talks back to the nun, saying that she was a prostitute before becoming a nun, and ends up getting kicked out of the boarding house. She says goodbye to Lucia and leaves. Marji's friend Julie invites her to stay in her house with her and her mother.
Section 4 (The Pill): Marji starts living with Julie and is disturbed by how disrespectful she is to her mother, whom Marji respects. Marji and Julie have a talk before bed, and Julie tells Marji about her sexual endeavors (condoms, etc.), which Marji is shocked by because people in her country were never open about sex and related topics. Marji states "I was shocked. In my country even when you had sex before marriage, you hid it." Julie's mother goes on a business trip, and Julie has a party, but it is not what Marji expects. Instead of eating and dancing, people were just lying around and smoking. Later that night, she hears Julie and her boyfriend having sex, and is appalled. Marji would later call this her first step towards assimilating herself into Western culture.