Tête-a-tête

The students of L’Érmitage International School stayed with DAIS student-hosts for an extremely eventful and scintillating week in February. Our first day proudly boasted of wholehearted attempts to mime French rap music and teach Bollywood moves to bewildered international students who don’t understand why we “act out the song’’. The rest of the week passed by in a blur and if not for the promise of the Indian Exchange to Paris, our goodbyes would have involved more tears.

Spending the day at the mall; shopping for kurtas and turquoise rings; watching decidedly horrible horror movies with a plethora of popcorn and candy and dancing our last night together away. Over the span of a week, we befriended people from a unique culture, people who weren’t so different after all.

Despite the apparent camaraderie and rapport, we were still students from two different parts of the world, and although we were more alike than unlike, some cultural differences were hard to ignore. For example, the conversation I had with my French exchange student about the wonders of Indian food: “What’s that tiny blob of like, vegetables and jelly-ish thing that they always serve you with bread? It’s like a little glop of food, very colorful, it's fascinating.”

“….Do you mean sabzi?”

“Yeahhhh, saabzi.”