Pick up where you left off friendships

I've mentioned before that I lived in London for a long while and in Switzerland for a short while and that I worked at Pax Lodge and Our Chalet during that time.

Working at World Centre means that on a fairly regularly basis I said goodbye to some of the women I lived and worked with and hello to some new ones. And by fairly regularly, I mean at least once a month there was a staff changeover of between one and four people.

Now, these women were usually in three to six month volunteer positions, but long(er) term staff changed as well. We all lived, worked, slept, and ate in the same building. Because most of us weren't from London, we became travelling and site seeing companions and by default we often ended up as friends.

There are many women who were part of my experiences at Pax Lodge and Our Chalet that I still consider very good friends. And some of them are so very different from me and have such different lives than me that I can't imagine we would have necessarily met, let alone become friends, if it weren't for our common World Centre experience.

ANYWAY...all that rambling is because yesterday we hopped in the car after J had gymnastics to have lunch at the airport.

Yes. At the airport.

Actually at the Fairmont. Which is a lovely place to have lunch if you have a few dollars burning a whole in your pocket and you have three hours. We had a great time. For the second time in two weeks.

We met my friend Heather and her friend Maia at the arrivals area and trekked across the airport. Heather and I worked together at Pax Lodge and Maia currently works at Pax Lodge. And Heather worked there until last year.

And even though it's been about 15 months since I saw Heather, and even though we've been bad about keeping in touch because some of us had crazy things happen with our jobs and some of us got new jobs and some of us went travelling in Africa and some of us have two year olds and a husband, well we just picked up where we left off 15 months ago. The only differences were the addition of Maia, who fit right in, and J is now a walking, talking small person, not a baby. And when we saw Heather 15 months ago, well, we picked up where we had left off 20 months before that.

And I love friendship like that.

I need friendships like that. Because if you check out Heddy's blog, you'll see that I'm a bit of a hermit these days and being able to dive right it like no time has passed is important.

Yeah.

Sorry, no pictures. We were enjoying the company too much!

PS Hi to all my pick-up-where-we-left off friends...I know there are a few of you read my ramblings! Hope we can pick up where left off sometime soon!