Comfort (food) and joy for international students

Wicked beats and festive treats lit the faces of hundreds of guests as they dined and danced the night away at Concordia’s year-end International Students Holiday Party.

Close to 300 revellers cut loose at Espace Réunion, on December 22, for what’s arguably become the university’s most rollicking shindig and annual tradition.

For a 12th year running, homesick students enjoyed lashings of seasonal cheer and spirit-lifting meals of turkey with all the trimmings.

Midway, floor-fillers spun by Montreal DJ James Karls morphed the Outremont reception hall into club-land as guests hit the dance floor till midnight.

Jemimah Akiro

“Holidays can be a lonely time, but if you’re with people in the same situation, you connect,” says Jemimah Akiro, a native of Uganda and student in the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science.

Nigeria’s Kehinde Adetiloye, a quality systems engineering student, made firm plans to party. “It’s a great way to bring us together,” Adetiloye says. “Otherwise we’d probably be sitting at home.”

Concordia Provost David Graham said the night was a way to bring the university’s more-than 5,100 international students into the clan: “This gathering is about kinship and goodwill, because you really are among family, your Concordia family.”

Mahsa Alishahi-Tabrizi

For Iran’s Mahsa Alishahi-Tabrizi, a graduate student in information systems engineering, it was high time to test the festive waters. “I’d read about the party and hoped it would be a fun networking opportunity,” Alishahi-Tabrizi says. “And I love to dance.”

Surveys by Concordia’s Advancement of Alumni Relations (AAR) showed strong demand for a dinner-dance-themed International Students Holiday Party. This year’s was no exception and the first with on-site dancing.

“In the past, students usually organized their own after-parties,” says Alumni Officer for Student Programs Rose Wangechi. “This year, like Santa, we wanted to deliver.” AAR did, with support from the Concordia University Alumni Association (CUAA). “

I look forward to this event because it gives me and my colleagues a terrific opportunity to meet hundreds of international students,” says Philippe Pourreaux, President of the CUAA.

Cheers! Getting into the spirit of the season.

• Photos by Ryan Blau/PBL Photography