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Published: January 21st 2014
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If you're about to embark on a study abroad trip and you're worried about making friends, don't be. International students bond quickly and stick together, and if you get a chance you should join an international society. The one that I found in Hull introduced me to a ridiculous number of people, and we took trips together every few weeks. I made my second friend when I went to sign up for the ISA. Like me, Erica was an American student studying drama. She insisted that I come to pub golf with the other students in the department, and just like that I had plans for my first night in Hull. I ended up going out with my new international friends every night for the next two weeks.
Technically, I suppose Erica was the third friend that I made. Earlier in the day I had been escorted to my new home, a two-story house located behind a panini shop on a tiny street that was really more of an alley. There was a Chinese place literally fifty steps from my front door, and they ended up taking a good bit of my money because I'm lazy and I possess a
great love of chicken fried rice. The house itself had four bedrooms, a tiny living room, and an even tinier kitchen. There was a single toilet in one room and a shower/sink combo in a different one, which I thought was a brilliant idea. My room was on the second floor, right next to a Canadian student named Tia. We bonded like glue the moment we met and spent a few hours settling in and getting to know each other. The third bedroom upstairs was empty at that point, and our downstairs housemate was a very nice international student whose name we couldn't agree on. After he introduced himself, Tia insisted that his name was Mark and I swore up and down that I'd heard Nick. We would call him Mark-Nick for the next month and a half because we were too embarrassed to ask him again.
Tia and I met Erica for pub golf that first night. This delightful game is played in rounds, and you're scored based on how many tries it takes for you to down whatever obnoxious combination of alcoholic beverages is on the list. We bailed early in the night and walked to the
city center instead, where we found a pub called the William Wilbeforce that looked classy enough at first. That perception shifted a bit the moment the music changed and a disco ball descended from the ceiling. Epic on so many levels.
Bless the nine thousand orientation seminars that I attended the first few days because I met some of my closest international friends. After one in particular, Tia shared an inside joke that she and her friends used called "Hello ." It was tailored to your particular location, and it was a subtle way to indicate that you had found an attractive member of the opposite sex. It took me about ten seconds to spot one right behind her.
"Hello Hull," I murmured, eying the tall, dark-haired boy who had caught my attention.
"Where?" she asked, glancing around.
Because the universe thinks it's funny, the boy in question and his friends chose that moment to wander over and we all became properly introduced. Because the universe is also a little cruel, he had blue eyes and a voice like French chocolate. To this day, the memory of it causes me to make stupid analogies
that make absolutely no sense. You'll see a lot of the same main characters in all of my English adventures, but he's among the most frequent, partially because he was one of my closest friends and partially because I'm a girl. I make no apologies for that second excuse.
Before I go any further, there are two things you have to understand about Romain: he is a joy to be with, and he is always surrounded by girls. Not even proper admirers, just girls. It's like an estrogen cloud that gravitates to him and follows him around, and Tia and I were no exception.
That day, I ate lunch with two French students, two Finnish ones, and a Canadian. It was like the beginning of a slightly off-color joke. Romain, Aurelie, Sonja, and Milla were all business students like Tia, which left me as the only impractical one. We met up later that night for drinks at Piper, and that was all she wrote. They were the first of many, many new friends.
I don't exaggerate when I say that I went out every night for the next two weeks. We would usually meet at someone's house to pre-game, and then walk as a group to whichever club was lucky enough to host us that night. I rediscovered a love of dancing, and even talked Romain into joining us one night at Aussie Beach. I met dozens of other students: Julia, Rakesh, Ulrike, Noopur, the Trio, Gabe, students from everywhere. Most of them were European, but not all.
Amongst all of this frivolity, I began my theatre classes. They were more discussion-based than the ones that I was used to, and I found the experience refreshing. African Theatre was particularly enjoyable since I had no knowledge of their theatrical traditions and very little practical knowledge of the culture. The atmosphere in all of my classes was very relaxed; it was not uncommon for the professors to joke with their students about drinking the night before, and I saw more than one of them out at the pubs. I was in class for a total of eight hours a week, which left plenty of time for exploration.
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