You just never know...

New experience today: I had Sonntagmorgensekt. That means I had champagne for breakfast. Definitely never drank that early in the day before.

haha. mine is almost empty already...

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Returning to a place that used to be your home after a nearly decade-long absence can be a little unnerving. You never quite know what to expect. Well, actually my parents and I did come for a visit five years ago but that doesn't really count cuz I was only 15 and too chicken to actually call up any of my former school friends to see what they were up to. When I think about it now I really can't say why I was scared to see them. Maybe it was because we had only moved three years earlier and it was at that stage where I had really been gone too long to still understand/be a part of their lives and yet I hadn't been gone long enough to feel completely removed from my former life out here. I guess it's best described as the awkward teenage stage of moving away: it was too fresh and yet not fresh enough. Plus, being 15 probably didn't help. I found it to be a period of low self-esteem and lack of confidence,as I'm sure many young teens do. I just figured my friends had long forgotten about me, had just moved on, and really wouldn't care that I had come back. I mentioned the fact that I had been in Germany for a visit in a few letters following that little holiday and received notes of sadness and disappointment in return because I had not made the effort to reconnect. I thought to myself that if I ever went back that wouldn't happen to me again.

And it hasn't.

Being 21 now and having lived in Canada again for the past eight years has changed a lot of things. Obviously I now feel that my old friends would be excited to see me again; the same way I feel about meeting up with them after such an extended separation. Plus we all have completely different lives now. They don't still go to the high school that we used to attend together. In fact all of us are either studying at university or doing with the Germans call "eine Ausbildung". Everyone is grown up and there is no longer a sense of "I don't fit in" on my part because really there is no PLACE to fit in anymore. There's no longer a fear of being forgotten or feeling excluded.

Reconnecting with old friends has been the best part of my month here in Germany. I mean, I can't deny that I'm always still just a tad nervous and apprehensive when I'm about to actually physically see an old acquaintance. Really these meetings can go two ways: a) it's as if you've never left and you can just talk for hours, reminiscing and catching up on the past 8 years or b) it's intensely awkward because you've both changed a lot, possibly in very different directions, and you have no clue what to say. I have been really really fortunate. I met up with Daniela M. (whom I have talked about quite a bit in former entries) and we actually spent four days together over the past week and a half. I was the most anxious about seeing her again because she was one of my best friends and I knew that the disappointment would be great if our friendship turned out to be lost. Thankfully, however, the anxiety was for nothing. :)

Really I can honestly say that I've only had one encounter that was more awkward than I thought it would be. An old friend of mine, Franzi, and I have been writing letters since the day I left Germany. Eight years of uninterrupted communication. She seemed really excited that I was coming out and we've been emailing a lot in the past month, too, about when we could meet up etc. Now, she's always been the kind of person who...let's just say...never had many friends. She can be a little bull-headed and opinionated, but heck, so can I! I've never really had a problem with her, we always got along fairly peacefully. :) But let's just say she doesn't exactly have a ton of social skills. But like I said, I've never had a beef with her and often when you grow up a bit, enter adulthood so to speak, a lot of those strong characteristics that define you in your teenage years soften around the edges and your perspective kind of broadens. Well, let's just say that Franzi is just like she was as a kid, with a little more opinion and an extra dose of negativity. This is not to say that she isn't still a nice girl or a good friend. But it did make our excursion to the ice cream parlour in Treuen (OLD MEMORIES OF PIANO LESSONS, MOM!!!) a little...how should I say this...stilted? The conversation just didn't flow like I thought it would and when there was a bit of a lull you could practically hear our brains churning in an attempt to find a new topic of conversation. For some reason I just got the feeling that she didn't really care that I was even here, which was completely opposite of the reactions I had been getting from her via letters and email. Yesterday a mutual friend of ours told me that when Franzi had told her I was coming she had seemed very excited, so I don't think she was completely ambivalent about it, but it was still strange. However, she actually lives really close to the city where I'll be located this year so I'm sure/hoping Franzi and I will have many more opportunities to get over this speedbump.

However, the 3 hours after this meeting with Franzi really provided a stark contrast. I had just found out the day before that one of my old elementary school friends whom I had lost contact with about 2 years ago due to a strange, inexplicable email address disappearance, was actually in Ellefeld right now! I knew that she was studying somewhere in Germany, couldn't remember where, though, and so I just assumed she wouldn't be at her parents anymore this summer. Well, thankfully I was wrong once again and so when I got back from my little "outing" with Franzi I decided to walk on up to Claudia L.'s. Definitely the highlight of my week. I rang the doorbell and on the other end of the intercom I heard Claudia's voice. I just asked whether Claudia L. was in and she buzzed the door open. As I started walking up the stairs she started coming down. She kind of looked at me and said, "Yes?" I said "Hello!" She said "Yes, hello..." And I was like, what? She doesn't even recognize me anymore? And then suddenly her eyes got huge and she squealed as she ran down the stairs. It was the best reaction I've ever gotten from anyone. So weird to see her all grown up. *And a beautiful girl she turned into! Holy cow. I still had this picture in my head of us in 7th grade...when really no one is beautiful except in their parents' eyes :) - I mean, you're just a kid.) And the next three hours were just a blur or memories and exclamations of "I can't believe this! I can't believe this!" on Claudia's end. Even her parents recognized me, which I thought was awesome.


And finally there was yesterday with Claudia S. (not to be mistaken for Claudia L. ... I know 3 different Claudia's). Last night was an unexpectedly super-fun evening. Claudia S. and I have known each other for 13 years but during my five years here we were never super close. We went to the same church, attended youth group together, but were never great friends or anything. And in the following 8 years that I was in Canada we never wrote or emailed. But we saw each other in church last Sunday and agreed to get together this weekend to catch up. She picked me up yesterday around 6pm and we decided to go for a walk. We started heading out to the direction of the woods and once you get on a path in the Ellefelder forest you'll be out there for a minimum of an hour. So I was thinking to myself, "what the heck are we going to talk about? We won't have nearly enough to say to one another!" But it turns out that once again I was mistaken and we walked for two hours without taking a breath...which is pretty significant for me seeing as how I'm just getting back onto my German-speaking feet and usually in the evening my brain just starts to shut down after thinking and speaking in German all day long. By the time we got back to the place where I'm staying it was 8:30pm and we were ravenous! Off to the Greeks in Auerbach for some awesome Gyros and Kalamari (JUST GOING TO INTERJECT HERE BY SAYING THAT I HAVE NEVER HAD KALAMARI LIKE THAT BEFORE. EVER. THE MOST TENDER LEAST STRINGY/CHEWY OCTOPUS I'VE EVER EATEN.) Anywho...it was a really unexpected surprise. It seems she and I have developed into nearly the same person while living our lives on two very different continents. Strange. My own educated-by-previous-experiences expectations might end up being the worst setup for a post-childhood reunion. It turns out you just never know.