There is a saying in my family: “Make new friends, but keep the old; For some are silver, and some are gold.”
While I would like to say that is a family original, it is a twist on an old poem by Joseph Parry about friendship and when I think back to my experience of Transatlantic Storytelling 2024, that’s exactly what I remember.
I headed to Cardiff, Wales, with 15 of my best friends, not knowing what to experience, just knowing that it was going to be the spring break of a lifetime. Now here I am, two weeks removed from the trip, thinking back to every special moment I had between my Sports Link family and now my Cardiff Met family.
We all first met that Thursday after we landed. All of us Sports Link kids were fired up to start working and the first step to that was meeting the other half of our crew. The fated night started at 9 pm at Roxy Lanes where immediately hugs were being given and conversations were blooming. We all connected so quickly that when the one round of bowling we all paid for ended, the Cardiff students asked us to keep the night going.
An hour later we found ourselves dancing and singing at the top of our lungs at the Live Lounge and a bond was forever born. We weren’t just two separate universities, we were one.
The next morning, we were ready to work. We discussed plans for live events, we met with the Cardiff students that were to be a part of our feature stories, and we started getting crews together for podcasts. To think that within a couple days two universities came together and were working together like we knew each other our whole lives, was an experience.
The rest of the 12 days we were there flowed the exact same way. We worked together as one huge team during the day and then we would go out together as one huge family at night. There was never a moment that I didn’t feel welcomed by the Cardiff Met students, nor was there a moment that I didn’t welcome them.
The connections and people I met, especially my soul sister Ella Jones, will be ones I keep forever. However, this trip wasn’t just about building deeper connections with new people, but also building deeper connections with my already best friends.
Most of my junior class has been close since freshman year, thanks to a fated fantasy football league we hosted the first weekend we got on campus. However, in recent years we have all fallen into a rhythm of just hanging out at each other’s places and just watching tv. While those moments of togetherness have been good, I felt we lost connections.
Going overseas and seeing all of us going out and having a blast was amazing and helped restrengthen that bond. I can remember every conversation I had with individuals from my junior class that made me feel that deeper connection we hadn’t had since freshman year.
Even being back now, the way we treat each other and talk to each other has grown. While March Madness has sort of thrown a wrench in those plans, we are still getting together and talking rather than all staring at a tv screen which makes my heart so happy.
Cardiff was more than just an experience to meet new people and make amazing work, it was the place where I remembered my family’s old saying the most. I met new people and made new bonds, but the old ones were strengthened in many new ways that I know they are my friends of gold.
