Alberta reunions

As I said before, it had been 14 years that we truly visited Alberta. Stopping in Calgary and in Edmonton gave us the opportunity to reconnect with friends that I had not seen in ages.  Thanks to social media and other contacts, I realised that quite some of my former school friends are now living in these cities.

In Calgary we were invited by my host brother in whose family I lived in '96 for a couple of months. We had not seen each other since '99.  That's very weird since I can confirm when we saw each other again that neither of us have changed a bit :D.  We just both got married in the mean time and are part of a family now.

For the children it was a little strange to go for dinner with unknown people (to them) on vacation. It took some explaining. But chasing the cat overwon their shyness. 

With some friends we didn't find a place, moment to meet but some reunions were amazingly easy to set up.  On the road from Calgary to Edmonton we had a coffee stop along the highway and met up with the Rotarian who had been responsible that I settled well in the community and my host family. It had also been since '99 that I had been together with his family. Guess what...his young children all of a sudden were adults :D.

2 of my school friends had teamed up in Edmonton to invite us for a BBQ dinner.  Despite the long time we had not seen each other, it felt very comfortable to hang out again and the conversations came very naturally. I had a lot of flash backs to my last high school year and the many evenings we hang out at each other's places to watch a movie , do homework or goof around.

Our children also merged very easily into their family and explored right away the toy room or the trampoline in the garden.  It was very moving to see that after so little time together there were already quite tender goodbyes to give. 

We did not only have reunions with old friends. We also met my friend Jennifer from JennandLucas for the first time. I've been reading her blog for 14 years and we've been in touch via social media since. Once again it felt very natural to meet, to talk and to get to know her family. She was so wonderful to actually drive to one of our last vacation destinations when meeting up in Calgary had not worked out. How sweet. I am so glad she did.