(Stop me if you've heard this one before...)
I'm almost a month late telling you all about this, but I went to Gori Girl's Spring Meetup! Gori Girl had organized a date, time, and location for bloggers & readers in this area to get together on April 16th, and I decided to go. I was actually kind of nervous about it. I've never met anyone from the internet in real life before. Who knows what these people are really like? What will we talk about? Sure, we sometimes write about similar topics, but who knows what the dynamic will be like when you get these people in the same room?
Well, I tried my best, but even I couldn't talk myself out of going. It was just too great of an opportunity to meet some of my favorite bloggers! Besides Gori Girl and her husband, there were also AmericaNepali, the Big Bad Blonde Bahu, Milwaukee Masala, and D. Jain. (There were others, too! I just don't have links for everyone.)
Let me tell you, I cannot describe the feeling of being in that room. Two years ago, I had NEVER met another person like me. Someone married to a desi guy, trying to figure out how to live within the bounds of two cultures. If you had told me back then that I would be literally surrounded by people JUST LIKE ME? People who understand EXACTLY what I mean when I say there's a need for a Desi Parents Day Care? I wouldn't have believed you. And it's not even like we talked about exclusively one topic, there were other conversations too. But having found an actual community, an actual group of not just sympathetic but empathetic women (for me) and men (for my husband). It's indescribably comforting. I feel like I'm in a different place now in my understanding of my life, and it's because of these people.
Of course we were late getting there, though. We're so very suburban, it's hard for us to go out to "the big city," or even the little city next to the big city. Plus, we had the baby with us, so we couldn't stay too late. We just stayed for the coffee portion of the evening and had to leave when everyone migrated across the street for dinner. M came too, and though he was not overly excited about it beforehand, he ended up having a great time. The baby did okay, even far past bedtime, especially because the BBBB spent the entire evening free-babysitting him!
Anyway, it was fantastic. I had a great time. I hugged people. And I'm definitely not nervous about the next one! If want to hear what some of the others had to say about it, you can read the other accounts of the evening below:
Gori Girl's write-up of the meetup (in her comments section.)
AmericaNepali's writeup.
Edited to add: I've had to remove all the links for now, because someone told me they got a virus from clicking on some link. I'm trying to figure it out...
