A Tower of Babel Dinner and some Loco Frenchmen

Last week my roommate Kenna decided she wanted to have a dinner party at the apartment and invite a hodgepodge of her international friends. I told her I'd love to help her, we decided on an easy meal of fajitas, and I offered to make the guacamole (one of the only things I know how to make).

As the guests started arriving it quickly became apparent that this dinner party was going to present a unique linguistic challenge. Here's how the guest list stacked up:
2 Spanish only speakers
2 French only speakers
4 Spanish/English speakers
1 French/little bit of English speaker
2 French/Spanish speakers
1 English/Spanish/Italian speaker

At one point, I was in a conversation in which the English/Spanish/Italian speaker was going back and forth between English and Spanish, while the French/Spanish speaker translated for the French only speaker, and I occasionally translated for the Spanish only speaker. Needless to say by the end of the night my head was spinning back and forth between English and Spanish, with a little newly learned French thrown in.

The two French guys (one of which spoke English), it turns out, are traveling around the world in a Citroen C2V, going from Saigon, hitting 5 continents and eventually making their way back to Paris. They are currently in Chile awaiting the arrival of the car by boat so that they can continue their drive up South America, through Central, and all the way North to Canada, before putting the little car back on a boat to Africa. Their story, told to us in VERY broken English, as well as French (which was then translated to Spanish by Kenna), was almost impossible to believe. But, the next morning I gave them a quick Google and, sure enough, their story is true.You can even track their adventure, here, though the Google translation is pretty terrible.

Anyone in DC, NY, or pretty much anywhere along the Eastern seaboard who is interested in giving these guys food, lodging, or work, I can vouch that they are cool, fun guys, and nothing if not interesting and entertaining.