If sipping Chai and savoring the African cornbread known as ugali while listening to Beethoven and watching Irish step dancers is your idea of paradise, you would have been in heaven during the mid-day activity period at Northampton Community College's Monroe Campus on March 13.

Flags from many nations adorned the Community Room for “D’Versapalooza,” an event designed to celebrate the culture and cuisine of many countries, including the United States. “We thought it was important to include local culture,” explained Jenn Bell, the student activities administrator who planned the extravaganza, “because some of our students come from other countries, and they don’t know much about our customs.”

At the table devoted to local culture, students could pick up brochures about local points of interest, take handfuls of pretzels and bubble gum, and sample a Pennsylvania Dutch treat - shoo fly pie - made by Celissa Counterman, a math instructor who executes recipes as well as she executes algebraic equations.

African art and jewelry were on display a few feet away where Cynthia O’Mala, a student from Kenya, and Karen Britt, assistant professor of business, wearing a stunning orange dress from Liberia, served up African and African-American specialties including a tasty vegetarian dish called osunga, homemade macaroni and cheese, and a sweet potato pie to die for baked by Karen Canon of the security staff.

Then it was on to India where Bina Patel, associate professor of early childhood education, attired in a traditional salwar-kameez, taught students to write their names in the elegant characters of Devnagari script, the alphabet used in Hindi and Sanskrit. Here you could also quench your thirst and soothe your soul with real chai, a spice milk tea from India that has come into vogue in the West in recent years. “Bina makes it the right way, not the Star Bucks way,” Bell said.

It was only a short sail across the room to Caribbean where students took turns at the dominoes table as men do in Havana. Nearby Assistant Dean Denise François-Seeney and Student Services Administrator Rosalee Boyer treated students to peas and rice from Trinidad and bun and cheese, a traditional Easter dish from Jamaica. Would you like flan with that? Absolutely, if it’s the authentic Latin American dessert prepared by Cris Rodriguez, assistant director of admissions.

What comes before Easter? St. Patrick’s Day. D’Versapalooza would not have been complete without potato stuffing made from scratch by Bonnie Schneider, a student who is “100% Irish” on her mother’s side. “It sounds like a stereotype, but I can do many things with potatoes,” Bonnie proclaimed. The proof was in the stuffing.

With full stomachs, about twenty-five students lingered after the feasting was over to converse – via the power of technology - with students from the Autonomous University of Sinaloa in Mazatlan. With Joe Scocozza of NCC’s computer services department at the controls, students from NCC and their counterparts south of the border were able to see and hear each other as they discussed similarities and differences between life in the United States and Mexico.

Conversation was lively and questions were plentiful in the virtual “meeting” arranged by Kelly McKenzie, an adjunct instructor of communications at NCC, and skillfully moderated by one of her speech communications students, Lisa Johnson.

In welcoming students to the dialogue, Lisa said, “Through this experience, we’re going to grow, we’re going to learn, and we’re going to have a lot of fun.”

The same could be said of “D’Versapalooza.”