Yesterday afternoon I got a text from Laura asking if 6:30 last night would be a good time to meet up with the other Emergency Management masters students, and I agreed to join them at a pizza place at the southern end of downtown. I was the first person there, but everybody else arrived a few minutes later. Laura was a little late, but I recognized Jared, and he introduced me to Samantha and John, and John's wife, Lauren. It takes me a while to warm up to people, but that process was helpfully sped up when I ordered a much larger beer than I intended. Everyone is super friendly, and they all seemed to find me entertaining enough that I was feeling comfortable with them before we had finished dinner. I already have plans to have them all over for dinner as soon as we can arrange a date and I can put together a menu. I have some Midwesterners to convince that veganism isn't so bad.
After dinner we started the bar-hopping portion of the night. I've been curious to see the bars in Fargo -- as adventurous as I can be sometimes, I don't like going to bars by myself. Well, the Fargo bars do not disappoint, insofar as you like your bars to be dives. We went to four, not including the pizza place, and I got a lot more comfortable with everyone as the night went on. A few of the bars in town are cash only, which is absurd, but it's easy to get drinks for under $4, so I can't complain too much, and because I didn't have cash last night, and because I'm the new girl, my new friends bought a few rounds for us. We went back to Samantha's for a while to sober up before going home. Samantha lives right downtown in a great apartment, which is nice because everyone else lives a ways out. Jared, John and Lauren slept at her place, and Laura came back with me to stay on my couch. I think it will take a while for me to be totally happy with my new social scene, not because I don't like these folks -- I do, they're awesome -- but because it always takes some time for me to acclimate to new people.
Luckily for me, I have a telephone, and Patrick and Andy had a little time to talk to me this morning. Patrick and I came to some kind of agreement that I will be significantly happier in Fargo once I have a reliable source of good produce, which took a surprisingly long time, but I also heard about his recent trip to Japan and some of the goings-on at the office. When Andy came in, they put me on speakerphone and we spent most of the rest of our conversation discussing the finer points of escalator courtesy, which is about par for the course. It's hard, when you're used to talking to people about and analyzing all the stupid minutiae of your life, to feel obligated to talk about the Big Things and not to pick and choose those seemingly unimportant details to discuss. I miss those conversations, but eventually I'll be comfortable enough with these new people to know who to talk to about what. I'll just have to sit tight until then.
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