finding old friends on facebook

I used to move around a lot when I was a kid -- I can't keep the dates straight or the order of places I lived in straight. I can't tell you if I went to all grades of elementary school. I was born in Queens Hospital in Flushing, New York. At that time, my parents were living in Queens but would move to Brooklyn before Sally was born. When I was around five or six, my parents moved back to Pusan, Korea. I went to international school there -- this is where I met my first best friend in life, Tuulia. When my parents separated (the divorce took awhile...like five years?), I went to a different school which was affiliated with the U.S. army in Pusan. That was my first good-bye. The next year went by in an odd manner-- where I remember going to Korean elementary school but the details are fuzzy and the three of us were wanderers. Then, my mom took my sister and me to Florida for a little less than a year. I think I was either in third-grade or fourth grade. We went back to Korea and I went to Korean elementary school again (a different one) where I met my second best friend in life, Yuh-ah (I found her about a year ago on a Korean-facebook type thing). Spending a little less than a year, my mom took us back to the states-- this time, San Francisco. I was in 4th grade. I made many friends (and found one of them on Facebook!). Then, she took us to San Diego. This is where I spent three years. After three years, I would move to Buffalo, New York.

Yesterday, I found on Facebook many of the people I remembered from San Diego including my seventh-grade teacher! I had tried to look for them years ago but none of my closest friends were on Facebook. What was interesting that I discovered from friending them was that -- while my life in San Diego was a neat chapter that ended with us four being bffs and me leaving...their lives in San Diego continued. The two girls were still inseparable. But one of the girls that used to be in our "clique" was missing in all of their pictures. I found her on Facebook and saw that they had gone to different high schools. The two girls weren't even Facebook friends with the third girl!

It's interesting how while time with those individuals for me stopped back twelve years ago...for them, it continued and changed. Life went on without me for the three girls who used to be my best friends. Of course my life without them went on as well. I don't know whether it was a good thing for me to have moved around so much. Probably not. Not a single time was the good-bye a little easier just because I had done it before. But I'm not sure if I'm the type of person who is able to live in one place for too long. While the good-byes are hard, the hellos with the new people are pretty wonderful. I like change. I like meeting people from different walks of life. I don't think I can live in one place for more than five years. I might scream. Or maybe it's because I've never done it before. Maybe I can do it.

Side-note: Kind of corny but I was probably never truly lonely during the wandering since I always had my sister.