This article offers a contribution to the limited literature on internationalization as academic work. Using narrative inquiry incorporating a mode of research known as "car time", the authors generate narratives of practice to analyse the day-to-day work involved in their international university collaboration. The article foreshadows the dialogic opportunities available to academic staff engaged in collaborative international work. This trust-based approach to internationalization involves building and sustaining inter- and intra-institutional relationships, catalytic events which "make things happen", and learning from each other via common and divergent institutional practices. While cognizant of demands for increased regulation, the article argues for a broader consideration of the learning to be gained from such partnerships. Three things keep this partnership going long after the ink had dried on official agreements between institutions: a personal click, shared professional interests and a framework for institutional agreements and structures.