Soiree in the Shoebox!

The Shoebox, of course, being what we fondly call our little apartment. Last night, Meredith and I organized a little get-together chez nous. It was so much fun! We don't have the money (or frankly the space!) to feed all the people that we wanted to invite, so we just told everyone to bring something snacky and come meet new people! It was a sort of house warming party, but also sort of a way to get people to meet each other. Its weird moving to a new city and not having a built-in network of friends, like when I was here as a student. Granted, I have a handful of french friends, but its always fun to enlarge one's circle, n'est-ce pas?

So, it was a bit of a random assortment of folks...american, german, french, english...very L'auberge Espagnole (if you've not seen this great film, its about study abroad and the crazy mix of cultures). An example is my friend Nawel (see picture) who is french, but wants to improve her "ingleesh" so she enjoyed hanging out with the anglophones. Mer and I love being hostesses because we get to wander around and mingle and chat and we know everyone, and everyone is so appreciative of us opening up our shoebox to have people enjoy it. Probably the best thing about being the hostess though, is that at the end of the night, everyone leaves and voila! you're already home! No trucking it home on the metro or bus in the middle of the night. The downside is, of course, cleaning up afterward (I'm putting it off by posting a new blog entry ;) but it was totally fun and we hope to do it again soon!