I Ended Up Picking Edinburgh
I only properly got into watching Vlogbrother's videos (via Charlieissocoollike) after university. It was a somewhat shitty time for me, because I didn't have a plan, and I was feeling pretty lost, so having wonderful, positive, inspired people to watch getting excited about the world helped keep me on this side of sane.
They brought me joy, and made me want to be as excited about life as they were. Where they /really/ made a difference in my life was a few months later, when I decided to go on a post-uni trip to the UK for a time. I was really nervous about going somewhere for so long a time where I didn't know a single person (and I'm the kind of introvert where making friends doesn't come naturally).
Long story short, I ended up picking Edinburgh as the city I'd call home for the next 6 months, and so I went about looking for ways of meeting people there, and found the Edinburgh Nerdfighters Facebook group. I was really really lucky in that they were a very active group, and at the time, were basically having weekly meetups.
So, on my very first weekend in Edinburgh, I went along to one of these meetups.... and then again the next weekend, and the weekend after that. Everyone was so friendly, that even if I wasn't having big conversations with everyone right away, I felt welcome and comfortable with them at once (it helps to be foreign in these situations, everyone wants to know why you're visiting and where you're from, etc etc. Excellent conversation starter.) And some of the older, more social members of the group started inviting me to things (a play they had extra tickets to, a casual dinner with friends, taking me on a tour of the city, going food exploring (aka cupcake shop/restaurant hopping), going for a beer at the pub, etc.).
It was a slow process, as establishing good friendships tends to be, but steady, and entirely wonderful. They became my family away from home - people I could hang out with, but also people I knew I could count on if ever I found myself needing help.
The best part of this though, was that I met M. I met him on my first Nerdfighter meetup - a BBQ up a snowy hill on a windy, rainy February day (the Scottish, I tell you) - and even though we were both pretty quiet, we started chatting on Facebook and Gmail from that day on...... and pretty much kept chatting on a daily basis, even when I was off doing side trips to other countries.
It eventually became clear to us that our interest in each other was more than just friendship, and once we'd found the courage to own up to that fact, we started dating. And ours has been the best relationship I have ever had, with anyone, ever. It's been almost a year since we started dating. I have since returned 'home' to Canada, and we've been going long distance for 8 months... and in less than a month now, I am permanently moving to the city where we met, so that we can properly begin living our lives together :3
- Claudia
(Tumblr: strawberryoes)
