Last night was a birthday party for a friend that I've made here. She is from France and turned 21 yesterday. I was under the impression that we were throwing her a surprise party. Rachel and I helped our other friend from France to make her a cake from scratch (which I never saw again at the party which makes me think it didn't turn out). I should also preface this little story by saying that the dormitories at JLU are spread out and each one leads somewhat to segregation in the student population. Obviously my dorm has the coolest people in it and the others can just live with that. See what I mean. Anyway, surprise party, right? No.
Rachel and I show up to Jeff's dorm area and in the common area are already more people than I thought I knew and more and more people from the summer course kept coming through the door. Turns out this wasn't a surprise anymore and that about 35, maybe more, out of 55 summer course students plus 4 of out mentors made the trek to come to our dorm building. Not being very good with large groups of people, I promptly placed myself outside with Victor where we could have pleasany discourse and smoke a pipe. Topics included The Doors, spirits, pipes, karaoke, Romanian drinking practices, beer and more.
The real point of my story is the following. While standing outside watching the people inside talking, I realized that I was in Germany listening to conversations around me in English. Then I noticed that our mentors and some Russian students were talking in German, while the other Russian students were speaking Russian. Looking in I saw the kids from Spain speaking Spanish or Catalonian. I also knew we had several people here from Poland that were gathered together at that moment and I'm sure the birthday girl and the other girls from France happened to be speaking their native tongue at that moment. It was just a very interesting revelation of what a diverse... I don't know... thing I'm doing. There were more that 6 languages being spoken in an area no larger than 30 or 40 square meters. It was cool and gave me pause for a moment.
4 comments:
Dude, you are doing something pretty sweet and diverse. And I'm proud of you for standing outside the party. You know I would've been right there with you. :)
How cool is that?!
I would have been outside with you too. Speaking of smoking a pipe...while I was in Victoria the other day, I stopped @ this shop and thought how nice it would be to buy you some Canadian pipe tobacco to send along with some peanut butter but it was ridiculously expensive. I'm not sure if that's just Canada or my thought was that you needed a cheaper hobby. Miss you much.
I love pleasany discourse.
Seriously though, very cool.
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