There's a society I joined on campus called Nothing Specific Society and on Thursday night they had a big party for their 3rd birthday. Me and Melissa went and Nick and Joseph, two of the guys from Canisius, stopped by too. It was an awesome time and I got talking to a lot of new people. It turns out that a lot of the members from FanSci overlap with the members of NSS, so I saw a few people that I'd met at game night and it was a great opportunity to talk to them! I ran into Hannah and Hillary, these two girls I met who are from Toronto, and I talked to my friend Eoghan for a long time, he's really cool and he runs the Dungeons and Dragons campaign here so we talked about that for a while and I think he wants me to play in his campaign while I'm here, which I'm really excited about because I love D&D and it'll be a great opportunity to hang out with people!
Me and Joseph at the NSS Birthday party - notice the birthday hat!
So yeah, Thursday night was fun and then Friday afternoon I had to leave pretty early for Cork to go to Warpcon!!! Which is a gaming convention at Cork college. It was cool because a bunch of people I met at the Nothing Specific party also came to the convention.
Friday night of a con is always kinda weird. It's like, you're never quite sure what to do and it was particularly strange not really knowing anyone that well. This was the first event I really went to since I've gotten here without at least one person that I know better, like Melissa or Nicole or people from Canisius. So Friday was a little uncomfortable, I didn't have much to do at the con and I was staying in the hostel with five other girls. But on Saturday I feel like things really came together. We went over to the con pretty early because there were gaming events going on all day. There was a session of D&D that I got to play in with a group of people in the morning and then I spent a lot of the day playing board games and stuff. Some of the other FanSci people were really into Magic the Gathering and played that for most of the weekend, so I had to find other stuff to do, but there were a few people that I really got to have some good conversations with and get to know, especially the other girls in my hostel room- Sharon, Hannah, Hillary, Josie, and Hazel. They're all really nice. There are like eight Hannahs in FanSci so I even got an official nickname here in Ireland. Since all the Hannahs are different nationalities we have nicknames based on it... like they call Hannah from Canada... "Hanada". So they're calling me "Americanna," hahaha. I love it. On Saturday night we went out with all the people from the con and it was really fun. We got the best chips ever (chips are fries) and we went to the Cork college bar. I kinda bonded with my friend Jarad, who's from America also, and we sang Sweet Home Alabama together, hahaha. Everyone danced a lot and it was crazy fun.
My friends Jarad, Hazel and Sharon
Also my friend Fergal is from Cork originally so he knows everybody and he introduced me to a bunch of his friends. Spending an entire weekend with Irish folks nonstop was kind of interesting. I still don't think I'm getting an accent but I'm definitely picking up on all the local slang. There were also some kind of culture shock moments and it was kind of funny! Eoin was hanging out in our hostel room and he was like "why would you put peanut butter and jam together?? that's so weird!!" That was nuts to me so I made him try it and he was totally weirded out by it, haha. Then later at the bar, one of Fergal's friends mentioned that he loved peanut butter and chocolate together, but he had never heard of Reese's cups! I just happened to have half a bag of Reese's pieces in my pocket so I gave it to him and he got SO EXCITED, it was hilarious. He was like running around the bar, having all his friends try the Reese's pieces, yelling "it's like smarties but with PEANUT BUTTER!" I love Irish people, haha. We all stayed out really late and then chilled at the hostel talking until really early in the morning, it was great.
I didn't stay super late on Sunday because I was so tired so I took the early bus home. After more board games, that is! Ticket to Ride is a really fun game actually. Though I might just be saying that because I totally won, haha. So yeah, I took the early bus and it took forever to get home and I was tired and hungry. But I'm just so pleased about this weekend! I really feel like I moved from knowing people here to being friends with them. And when I got back on Sunday night, me and Melissa had a girl date at an italian restaurant with the best spaghetti carbonara I've ever had haha.
The beginning of this week has pretty much been chill after so much going on this weekend. I got some stuff done on Monday, cleaning and getting groceries and adult stuff. But now I'm really excited for FanSci tomorrow. And in two weeks, me and Melissa and Nicole are planning on going back to Cork. I know, I was just there, but I spent the entire weekend on the campus. I only walked through the city like twice but it seemed really lovely. So we're going to go back and do the touristy kind of stuff and also visit Blarney Castle while we're down in the south of the country. I'm pretty excited about it! It'll be the weekend before Gabe comes so it'll give me something fun to do to make the time go by faster!
I guess when I got back from Cork to Galway, I felt like I'd returned home. I know this city and I know people here and it's pretty awesome.
It sounds like you had a really good time. That makes me happy.
ReplyDeleteWhen I come to visit are people going to call me Americmanna? Manericanna? It would be much easier if I were the dad of the Canadian Hannah.
There are lots of Hannahs but I'm pretty sure there's only on Mannah.
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