We aged well

In the middle, two of us in Spring 1998 (we count the anniversary from the beginning of our year abroad, which was in 1997. This was already towards the end) ...

And here all of us again, in Summer 2007 :-D

Like good wine, we aged well, don't you think? Yes yes, maybe with some additional kilos, haha, wonder what we'll look like in another ten years from now...we're already planning our 20-year reunion! All this somehow reminds me of the quote I use all the time:

"Wisdom doesn't automatically come with old age. Nothing does - except wrinkles. It's true, sometimes wine improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place."
(Abigail Van Buren)

And I think it's fair enough to say that we were good grapes, hehe. Who would have thought, after all these years we're still in touch. We have managed to see each other once a year or once every two years since 1997/1998, the year we all spent a high school year in the USA. First, we spent ten days at a so-called "cultural preparation camp" at Ramapo College in New Jersey. We flew over the Atlantic Ocean in the same airplane, all either sixteen or seventeen years old, about to begin a very shaping journey away from home. Remember, that back then we had no cell phones, hardly any internet yet (my hostfamily didn't have a computer, for instance, and my family back home didn't have internet yet), so there was no "cheating": I called home maybe once a month, sometimes a bit more, and wrote letters. Lots of snail mail, being on your own, and I wouldn't have wanted it to be any different. Okay okay, I know this may sound like coming from the memoirs of a seventy-five year old, haha. However, even though ten years isn't that long a time period, things were quite different back then compared to now.

So here's a toast to us, to the REAL Fantastic Four, hehe, to friendship that will hopefully last a lifetime !!! Love and miss you all, I really do :-D