There were a couple of moments since arriving in the states when I genuinely thought that I would spend the whole year alone and that I would never make friends. Now, that seems incredibly overdramatic, but at the time it felt like a very real possibility. But I am happy to announce that that is not the case! And I apologise for the quality of these photos of photos, my camera died so I had to take them quickly on my samsung instead!
I went on my very first night out on Friday with my lovely German friend, Delia. We "pregamed" at hers, before meeting up with some American contacts and going to a ridiculously hot and busy frat party. It was like nothing I have ever seen in the UK, so many people crammed into one house, a full set of club speakers and a (completely free!) bar where you could order various awful cocktails or shots. After about ten minutes there, the police showed up, which was completely unsurprising! The frat guys who owned the house made everyone get into the house, turned off the lights and tried to keep everyone quiet until they left, which wasn't that successful! In the end they let everyone out the back and called it a night, so that was that! My very first frat party! It wasn't the end of the night for us, though, as I ran into one of the sorority girls from my creative writing class who invited us out to a couple of bars. First we went to MacGrady's, a worn down but homely bar where we could sit down and talk and drink $3 cocktails. And then later we moved to Leon's, which felt very similar to the cheap bars you find in Britain, it definitely reminded me of Popworld in Aldershot! We were with a lovely group of people and it was really fun to drink a bit and talk a lot and just go with the flow.
On our little expedition around South Bethlehem, we found the most American bus stop in the world, complete with flag and statue of liberty! We had to take tourist photos.
I have been much more social in the past week, meeting up with all sorts of people for coffee, ice cream or lunch. One of the highlights was meeting Gill in person for the first time. Gill was the Kent exchange student at Lehigh last year and we have emailed and facebooked about America and visas and Lehigh for the past six months. She came back to visit this week and it was great to meet up and chat about a million things from America to Kent to religion to relationships! We met up at 11am for coffee and I didn't leave her apartment until gone 4pm! It was just so nice to talk to someone who knew exactly what it was like to be suddenly thrust into college life. She gave me lots of tips and stories about her time in Lehigh and we went to an open mic night on campus and someone read poetry so I might even try to finish my most recent poem before next month so I could read it!
We even baked! In Kent I always wanted to bake, but never got around to it, so it was pretty fun to make muffins, even if they didn't exactly turn out great!
I feel like I'm slowly getting there with people, slowly making proper friends that I can talk to without thinking about, slowly making in jokes and social groups and plans for the year that actually involve people! I like being independent and doing things on my own, but spending every minute of every day on my own was incredibly lonely. I missed sharing my life with people. It's so nice to be able to hang out with people and laugh again.
Bethlehem already felt like home, but now I have a little international family as well, and I can't wait to see what this year holds.
