NO MATTER THE DISTANCE

Have you ever met someone on a trip or during some kind of abroad experience and preserved this friendship for years without seeing each other again?

That’s exactly the topic of this post!

In 2008 I was attending an Anthropology course at the University in Italy when they gave me the chance to take an internship at the Curtin University in Perth, Australia.

That was a dream come true, I was just a 20 years old kid and I was about to study the aboriginal culture in one of the most important department for aboriginal studies in the whole continent. I was sooo excited and sooo scared at the same time. It was not the first I was living alone in another country, but this time was a little different, it was about to go on the other side of the world, studying in a prestigious University and well, my english was not the best.

Anyway, I packed my things and the adventure began.

I had a very full schedule during those months in Australia, I was going to an english school in the morning and to the University in the afternoon, having just a sandwich on the 40 minutes bus ride from school to Uni.

It was actually in the Milner school of english where I met most of the people that really meant something to me and one in particular was so important that I’m here, almost 10 years after, writing about her.

Her name is Alicia, well, not actually, but that’s the name she gave herself to make things easy to western people like me. She’s Korean. I had never met a korean before and had no idea about their culture, lifestyle or anything. She was attending my class and we became quickly and easily friends for life.

We spent a lot of our free time having BBQs with the crew, clubbing and going around on mini trips around Perth but the most important thing, we talked and laughed together a lot.

Once we both had left Australia we occasionally chatted on facebook (still not that common those years) while promising each other we should definitively meet somewhere again.

We used to text each other things like – I miss you, Love you babe! – and the thing is that we meant it for real !

A couple of months ago she texted me this : Hey yo ma bestie! How u doing? Where are you these days? I might go to Rome to transfer on my business trip, if you are there we could meet up!

Do I need to say what happened next?

We finally met after almost 10 years of loving messages on social media!

We spend just a day and a half together in Rome but it was just like spending a whole year together again. We talked, we laughed, we went for some shopping at the market and we took hundreds of photos ( mmm, well, I took her hundred of photos! ) but that was without any doubt the best time I had since a long time.

The thing we both found pretty weird was that we immediately found ourself comfortable with each other, no silences, no problem of any nature, we were just like two friend that use to hang out almost every day. And guys, that was an amazing feeling, I really felt all the Love for this girl was always been real and pure.

I’m so happy of our time together and most of all, of our incredible story that I really felt the need to write this post about it to show the world that special friendships exist and they have to be told somehow.

So guys, there’s something I want seriously to tell you. Don’t let the distance decide for you if a friendship could be real or not, because most of the time they really could be and listen, they can actually worth it! It’s not just about meeting people and having a good time, it’s all about CULTIVATE friendships no matter the distance or the culture or whatever.

I’ve always been pretty lazy on relationships, I am not so into the chatting thing but what I learned in the last few days is that this laziness could have prevented me from spending this amazing time with Alicia and I would never have forgiven me for this.