Friendship

If the phone rang, and you knew it was a good friend. And you knew that friend had done something very, very bad, let's say killed someone. Would you pick up the phone, knowing that it could potentially harm your life forever?
(DISCLAIMER: this is a hypothetical situation. No one is dead.)

I just had the most fabulous chat with a good friend. We made pasta and watched about 5 minutes of Grey's Anatomy (until someone got into a life-threating accident because there was a car-sized hole in the street. Seriously people?).  Then we just chatted. About life, about our friends, about politics, about religion. We laughed at stupid stuff, worried about things we can't change, and compared wardrobes. It was just a thursday night, nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary. But as I walked back to my room through the snow, I realized it WAS something special.

Out of my "casual" friends back home, I feel I have lost many of them in the past few months. People who don't bother to check in, who didn't wish me a Happy Birthday. Living here, I've realized those people are not the ones that matter in my life. They've floated in and out and barely been missed.

But there are a few people who have stuck. Those are the people that, even though they life an ocean away, still matter to me. They leave me messages saying things like "Only the bottled water" and "Go on a safari!".  Those are people that I saw this winter and it was like nothing had changed. Those are people that I haven't seen in ages, and I know that it won't. They keep me updated on their lives, and I genuinely want to know how they are doing. Even though they cannot entirely relate to all the craziness that has gone on in my life in the last six months, they care about it. They care about me. Moving abroad showed me who those people are.

And then there are people I have met here: people from all over the world, people whose lives and backgrounds could not have been different from my own. An Air Force Cadet who is like a prettier version of GI jane, a hippy from Alaska, an All-American/All-Moroccan girl raised in Florida. A Boise State fan from Casablanca, my sweet, ambitious, belly-dancing roommate, my Italian girls who always made sure I told them I was ok. They have changed my life in the smallest ways, and opened my mind to completely new ways of thinking. Moving here showed me how much those people have to offer me, and how many of those people the world has to offer.

Friendship isn't about where you grow up, what color you are, or even what language you speak. It's about knowing who you would pick up that phone for. I've gotten a much better idea of who I would pick up that phone call for. And I would tell them that we will put the body in the pig-pen.