Hi, I’m Samy. I have been Evelyn’s best friend since fourth grade, which is scary to think about, because that was about 10 years ago. We have been friends for so long that we have had several different phases in our friendship. When we first met, we were both living in Franklin, Massachusetts. We spent almost every weekend together at one of our houses, and were pretty much inseparable in school. It was great for a few years, but then I moved to California for eighth grade, and all of high school. We started a new phase in our friendship then—a long distance part, where we spent hours and hours on Face Time, and tried to visit each other at least once a year. While we were still talking to each other almost daily in eighth grade, high school gave us more commitments to things other than staying in contact of each other. But this was okay, because we still spent hours talking when we had the time, and it didn’t really feel like we had missed anything. We got used to only talking to each other occasionally, but always ended the calls saying things like, “we really should talk more often; I miss you!” I expected it to be much the same when I went off to college, and Evelyn went onto her mission trip, because the system we had worked; we didn’t talk all that often, but we were still very close friends. I was surprised at how a new phase developed and we talked more frequently though; it seemed to be closer to once a week to once every month or so. And it was a nice change to get to be in contact more regularly, and talk about the menial day-to-day things that usually got glazed over when we had been out of contact for a while. So while it is an adjustment to make to have Evelyn far away in Ethiopia without reliable wifi, I know she is doing well, and it will be okay if we don’t talk every week. I know we will still be just as close after, and that we’ll spend hours talking to each other about what amazing experiences we’ve had since we last talked.
