This blog post requires a little bit of a backstory, so bear with me.
The year after I graduated high school I decided to take a gap year to study abroad and learn Spanish before going to college. That decision landed me in a small town in central Ecuador where I lived for a year. During my time there, there were also two other exchange students that ended up in the same small town, Myles, from western Canada, and Kelly, from Belgium. Needless to say, the two of them became my best friends there. After spending basically every day together for an entire year, we had to eventually say goodbye and go back to our own countries.
Fast forward to now and it’s been almost exactly three years since the three of us have been in the same place together. But as it turns out, Kelly is currently still living in Brussels, I am here in Nijmegen, and Myles has been studying abroad in Sweden for the year, but happens to be in the Netherlands for a short time. So for the first time in years we realized that are all within hours of each other, which of course meant that we knew we had to try to figure out a time to have a reunion.
So this past Saturday I woke up early, hopped on a 3 hour train headed to Belgium, and met up with Myles the moment I got there. I was unsure how this day was going to go, as we hadn’t done the best job of keeping in contact recently. However, as with all good friendships, being back together it was like nothing had changed. Myles and I spent the morning walking around the center of Brussels catching up on our lives and waiting for 2pm, which is when Kelly was able to meet us. The moment I saw Kelly I couldn’t believe it. The two of them had become like family during the year we spent together, and seeing them both together after so much time was just overwhelming in the best sense of the word. I haven’t smiled and laughed and been so happy in a while. We spent the day walking around, eating, and just enjoying being together. Since I was just in Ecuador a few weeks ago, and I knew seeing them was going to be a possibility, I had brought a few little things from there for us all to share, just like the old times. Unfortunately, the day went by too fast and we all had things to do, so we had to say another painful goodbye, without knowing for sure when we would all be able to be together again. Luckily, Myles and I ended up having to take the same train back into the Netherlands, before parting ways, which allowed us at least a little more time together. I’m hoping to see each of them one more time before I go back home, unfortunately it probably won’t be the three of us together again, at least not this trip.
Enjoy some poorly scanned photo booth photos of our reunion.
