My Semester Abroad

It's a balmy 72 degrees as the sun begins to set. Eighteen people are gathered around a table brimming with delicious treats. I am at my first Swiss block party. I now live in Coppet, a sweet, quaint town, 10 minutes from downtown Geneva. An elderly community inhabits these apartments, but as fit and active elders as you have seen. I am by far the youngest at 21, but am soon joined by a 35-year-old Belgium man who is interested in me, until he realizes I have yet to graduate university.

I stand awkwardly; uncomprehending the fast, fluent French swirling around me. As I valiantly try not to look out of place or feel uncomfortable, people approach with warm smiles, open hands and French pleasantries, I respond in kind, carefully pronouncing, "Bonsoir." As the wine begins to flow, conversation becomes increasingly comfortable.

Slowly sipping my wine and surveying the scene, I am suddenly struck by the similarities to home. Three little girls run about and are soon joined by a Portuguese boy. All four children ask their parents to play with them, but after faced with the all-too-familiar parental protest of fatigue, they quickly become bored and play with one another instead, laughing with wild energy and acting rambunctiously.

I soon make friends with the Belgian, who tells me of the first time he visited the United States. Plopped into an East Coast middle school at age 11, he was forced to put aside Flemish and French for English. Although he learned the language in the brutal and ruthless atmosphere characteristic of junior high, he seems to have survived unscathed.

Besides the attentions of the Belgian, I found I was being eyeballed by an elderly Italian man, who, had he been thirty years younger, would have been quite the catch. He was good-looking, expressive (naturally) and funny. I caught some of what the Italian man was saying, and even felt confident (three glasses in) to add my own broken-Italian quips. Roaring with laughter, he complimented me on my attempts. His kind words, however, were owing to the bubbly and not my pronunciation.

I moved on from the intoxicated Italian to a French-speaking man who told me he had been born in America. He seemed reticent, so I began peppering him with questions like the journalist I hope to be. He finally admitted he was a former journalist, who cynically proclaimed he didn't even follow the news anymore.