Unconfortable Views 3 - The temporality of international communities.

Dinner again at Strasbourg St.Denis, French, Brazilian, Mexican, Spanish, Turkish, Austrian. . No matter when you go there the apartment is always full of different nationalities. Fun and convivial dinners, with the few people who are left from the HEC times, some of us hadn’t even met at HEC, ironic huh? We end up always confronted with the same question “when are you leaving?” Response: Xmas, February, maybe march. The furthest that I heard was – “maybe April”. Its good to see that like me, many are full of international plans, moves and crazy adventures ahead. The same goes around my apartment “ 22^nd December”, “4^th of January”, “sometime in February”. . . . Yes, hanging around international people is what I am used to we are all in the same situation- new in a foreign country-, however this temporality makes it hard. I’m constantly being reminded that every single person with who I spend my weekends and evenings – except for red cross Tuesdays- will be gone within the next 3 months. I will probably be the last one to leave. And if I stayed? New friends all over again?? I do have some French friends- not many, some also left. In order to avoid all this temporality and sadness of friends coming and going are we meant to stick to local communities? Will we then be assured that nobody moves away from the city within the next 6 months? No. However, maybe then, we will be the ones that will move the fastest and like this feel less the impact of the movement of others on our lives. But let the concept not trap us, at the end nothing is permanent, and even in more local communities things move and change; maybe at a slower pace- but they change too. However, when trying to find a stable life the international community of expats exchange students and international interns might simply move too fast.