An International Community

Saturday night I went to a birthday party for an Italian friend of an Italian friend. The emphasis on the Italian is a result of a running joke about Italians being crazy between myself and a Spanish classmate. At this point I have had an Italian in at least one of the two classes that I take each week. Part of the reason that Italians are crazy is the fact that even when they speak French they sing it like it is Italian. The cool thing about them though is they tend to be socially uninhibited.

Back to the party. In this city when you are invited to a party you are given a time, an address and apartment number along with the necessary pass codes to the building. The Italian apartment is on the 5th floor of building on a bit of hill in the 18th. That part of the 18th seemed to have a larger African immigrant community as evidence of the ethnic restaurants and publicities that I saw. The apartment opened into a large living room/dining room/kitchen area that is on a rounded corner of the building. One bedroom went off to the side and stairs went up to another bedroom on the floor above. The big room at the party’s height held about thirty. Over the course of the night the musical variety went from beetles to elvis to radiohead to Andre 3000 and a similarly varied Italian Selection. As the music changed different people would start dancing where ever they were maintaining a minimum of five or six dancing to any given song. Again the dancing offered a spectrum from the twist to something else that made me think it was Israeli. The people who were at the party were also of a spectrum: an Italian crashing somebody’s couch who implored me to visit his beautiful town of Venice; a German who has a girlfriend living in Paris who he met in Poland; A Parisian who works with developing artists; A couple Italian students; A Czech visiting for a friend for a week; And 4 American college girls that showed up near the end. I didn’t talk with the Americans, I guess because they made themselves into a little group.

I am continually amazed by the diversity of nationalities that I come across. Last week I had gone to a party at some Finnish people’s apartment and there was a similar diversity of nationalities. Maybe it is just that I am a part of a loosely organized international community.