High School Friends Forever

One of the hardest parts of moving across the ocean (or to a new city of that matter) is having to make friends. I consider myself a pretty social, outgoing person, and I am always up for meeting new people, but making friends in a new country is no easy task. Moreover, it makes you miss the good friends that you have on the other side of the globe. One thing is for certain, no one can beat the friends you grew up with.

Like many college graduates, my high school friends moved away after graduation and are now either living in their second or third location. These days we do not spend a lot of time together, but we do manage to keep in touch through email, phone calls and the occasional visit. When I heard that they were all going to be in CT for at least part of the Christmas break, I was so excited that I would be able to see them and have them meet Ariel. Little did I know what they had in store for me.

These girls have been with me for many years, some going back to 6th grade and others I met in high school. Like many teenage girls, we took lots of pictures and then filed them away in old shoe boxes and photo albums. As the first of my friends to get married, they had the idea of putting together a scrapbook for me. They pooled all of their most embarrassing and ridiculous pictures of us growing up and assembled them together with personalized notes. When they gave me the book it took everything not to cry. Friends like this you can’t make in a year. It takes decades of sleep-overs and fights, funny jokes and embarrassing moments to build up the history that I have with these girls.

I have met wonderful people since I have moved to Israel, my fiancé included, and I wouldn’t change a thing, but every so often I still get homesick for my friends from West Hartford. I know that I will not get to see them often, but they will always be near and dear to my heart.