Friends

I can't stop thinking about a particular part of my aspiration statement.  My-self analysis is never terribly detailed nor accurate, but... I think I got this one right.  Here is the paragraph I'm talking about.

"There is something that is both a strategy and also a very important goal to me during my service in the Peace Corps: friendship.  I think the best way for me to adapt to a new culture is through friendship.  I want to be a friend and an integrated part of the community.  I don’t want to be “the new Peace Corps volunteer,” I want to be “Betsy.”  I’ll need open communication, honesty, dependability, many hours getting to know my new friends, and many hours of letting them get to know me.  I feel and function best in life when I am a friend and have a friend."

Friendship has always made me a bit of a mess in the head.  I have plently of friends, but "best friends" are few and far between.  I really click with a very few people..  

At age 12, I met Hoang Doan.  It didn't take long before we were stuck together with super glue.  I mean literally, I think once we actually glued our thumbs together.  When we started the transition from children to sort-of real people, circa high school, we remained incredibly close.  During the weird awkward teenage years, we floated in and out of social cirlces but remained best friends.  Hoang got my sense of humor and I hers, we had the same interests, we had similar goals, and we had (and have) quite high aspirations for ourselves.   I had other great friends in high school, but none quite like Hoang. 

When we left for college, we drifted apart... which is as is sad as it is my fault.  During my first two years at Penn, I meandered around different groups: athletes, science nerds, and even the fashion society.  I had friends, but never anyone like Hoang, and certainly not a "group" (ie Seinfeld, Friends, etc.).   Although it doesn't sound like a big deal, it totally sucked.  I didn't feel like I fit no matter where I turned, and it made me sad.  I considered transferring approximately once weekly. 

Then, I made the single best decision of my college career...I studied abroad, 1/2 for adventure and 1/2 just to get AWAY from Penn.  And where better to do those two things than Australia??  While abroad at James Cook University, I met my first "girl group."  ATown, Christa, MB (HOLLER).   I will always remeber that semester as full throttle living life.  I was sailing, swimming, drinking fruity wine, dancing, playing rugby, studying (I swear), hiking... and I was doing it all with a GREAT group of people.

Apparently I was on a roll, because a few months after returning to the US, Carolyn Mooney asked me to play on the Penn women's club volleyball team.  I said yes (reluctantly), and the rest is history.  I stayed with the team through the end of my senior year, and more importantly, Carolyn became my best friend.  We had amazing teamwork on the court,  cooked delicious dinners together, went out together, shopped together, studied together, hit the gym together... There I was again living life!  At the school that I thought I had bitterly hated, none-the-less. 

Throughout the the course of senior year, Carolyn and I fell into what would become the second "girl group" of my life. Sarah, Court, Romy.  Again I was going here and there, do this and that, never taking one second to breath, full on LIFE.  I want to write more thoroughly about the unique dynamics of this group later (or pass that task off to Carolyn), because these people have changed my life.  You have changed how I live and treat myself.   Because we came together and formed such solid, amazing, inspiring mesh, I can say

"Yo World, Betsy Conway is living life!" 
And I say it knowing you got my back.

Love always, Betsy