Of Facebook...and Friendships, Old and New

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About a year ago I joined Facebook. It was a pleasant distraction, especially in my pre-blog / writing days. At first the friends I added were mostly co-workers or people I was still in touch with. Then it became a means of keeping in touch with cousins in Canada and the UK and friends in Belgium, Spain, Germany, Bulgaria and the USA. It was a great way of sending messages and seemed less impersonal than forwarding an email. Facebook lets you send all sorts of silly stuff to your friends and is also an effective way of sharing photos and videos.

But the greatest thing about Facebook is that, as its tentacles spread and more and more people became addicted, I started to find old friends from University and Sixth Form (High School, for my American readers :)). Then I found a friend from primary school and then another and another. It was really awesome. It led to a five of us meeting up last June. We spent the evening talking and reminiscing. I had not seen some of these girls for 20 years but we had been very close and there literally was no ice to break. We plunged in and exchanged memories. But we could not stop there. We organised a reunion and 3 months later a group of about 25 'old girls' (I went to an all girls school) met up. And what a noisy evening that was!

Since then we have found more and more 'old girls'. Having recently found out that one of our school friends will soon be emigrating to the UK, we have decided that the time is ripe for another noisy evening of exchanging memories and photos. But the best Facebook discovery was made early this week. We got back in touch with a German girl who left our school and Malta way back when we were all 8 years old. I had never seen or heard from her till last Monday and it was the biggest surprise to get back in touch. She now lives half way around the world in Argentina and somehow it seems that Facebook has made the world a much smaller place.

So today's post is dedicated to friendships old and new; to friends who were out of my life for many years but are now back in it and who are, once again, there for me when I need them. But above all, this post is dedicated to the precious memories of childhood that we are re-living and exchanging and to a time in our life which will never come back but which we all cherish with all of our hearts.