Greetings from Cork!
What prompted me to write this post was a notification from Facebook actually, sharing that it had been one year since Holy Cross Athletics posted the video of our men’s and women’s teams seeing the beautiful new court that was renovated last year for the first time. In the short bit I’m being interviewed in the video, my absolute *love* for being on camera (lol) and excitement over the renovation definitely shone through as I emphatically shared that being from Needham, the Massachusetts state decal part was my favorite because “I’m a local.” Although this quote was met with lots of jokes and funny comments from family, friends, and even myself, I fully meant it. Growing up so close to where I went to college and being able to immerse myself and fall in love with the Worcester community, I loved that my MA state was now a part of the Hart Center because it just further solidified that Holy Cross and Worcester had become one of my many homes.
Serendipitously, the day I saw the video shared on Facebook, I had been somewhat reliving that mentality of a home away from home – not for Worcester, but for Cork. Â Through coaching my two teams, playing for Brunell, and studying at CIT where there are a lot of students from the area, I was excitedly realizing that perhaps (if I’m lucky) by the end of the year I might just be able to use my “I’m a local” motto for a city other than Worcester, MA. However American I still am called out for being with my to-go iced coffee cup that my classmate calls my “sippie cup”, this place is becoming home – when exploring the beautiful Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral the other day, I ran into one of my classmates. I saw another one of my classmates grocery shopping in the city, and one of my teammates just happened to be at Penney’s at the same time I was (not very hard because I’m there maybe 3x a week). I especially knew I was on my way to making it when someone asked me, the girl that MIGHT have had Google maps running on her phone, how to get somewhere and I actually gave the correct directions.
So overall, things are definitely going very well. However slowly, I am *surely* on my way to becoming a local, and this city and this community is becoming a different, lively, challenging, and refreshing home away from home. 🙂
