The International Student Party

I don't know if I've mentioned Nicola and Michele in this blog. In any case, I met Nicola when Gabriella was teaching Mike and me yoga on one of the many Tridente terraces. It was a nice day, and we were trying to be totally silent while doing these various poses, then some Italian guy broke the silence by having a telephone conversation in French a few feet away from us. I didn't notice, but Gabriella and I both told me to speak to him in French (they couldn't tell that he had an Italian accent in French, but I could. I love the Italian accent in French—it's quite delicate!), so I did. Turns out he had just gotten back from a year in France through Europe's Erasmus program, a cheap and wonderful way for European students to take advantage of the proximity of other countries. 

Well, we have been hanging out with Nicola and his friend Michele for a while. Nicola cannot believe that I don't have an accent in French, and is also quite impressed with my Italian. But, like any good Italian, he acts very immature all the time, and jokes around with all of us. With me, he tells me I have a French accent in Italian since I told him I like his Italian accent in French. Anyway, Nicola was at the party last night (Michele is back home in Puglia) and told me an excellent fairy tale: 

"Once upon a time, or maybe twice, there was a human being." 

The rest of the story was just as good as that opening would suggest. Everyone else was dancing to the standard American party music, so I wasn't particularly enjoying barely being able to hear the story.  In any case, it is really fun to have trilingual conversations, walk that fine line between sarcasm and irony to keep up with Nicola's sense of humor, and hear an Italian tell a fairy tale in English, since we're reading lots of Italian fairy tales in our class nowadays (mostly Calvino)!