30 'til 30 Day 11: Friends in Far Places

When I first moved to Seattle, I knew absolutely no one. I had interviewed on the phone with two nice people that would soon become my bosses, and my parents had some friends about an hour away who they had known when we lived in Florida, but for the most part I was on my own. I found my roommate through a Craigslist posting and she was just crazy enough to agree to live with a complete stranger from 4000 miles away who she'd only ever talked to on the phone. Aside from having a great name, my roommate Sarah was incredibly welcoming. She invited me out with her friends every weekend and made sure I knew how to get around my first month in town. Unfortunately, after just a few weeks, Sarah announced that she had the opportunity to live in Dubai for several months for work. She would continue paying her portion of the rent, but I would be all by myself again

By that time, I had started to get to know the other interns at work, but many of them worked on shows in the evenings, and others already had good social circles in the community. Fortunately, I had also started to attend a church in the area, where I joined a women's bible study and met some new friends from the area, as well as other transplants: Meghan from California, Lauree from North Carolina, and Liz, Arielle, and Mary--all from, you guessed it, Virginia! 

Soon, we developed into a tight-knit group who regularly gathered to cook dinner and do life together. Over the next two years, the group would celebrate engagements and new jobs, dance at birthday parties and weddings, cry through breakups and other losses, and laugh over lots of glasses of wine. Perhaps it was the fact that many of us were away from home and family & needed surrogate sisters to get us through, or the fact that we just all happened to be asking the same big life questions about love and work and adulthood at the same time, but there was something extra special about the bond forged so quickly between this beautiful group of ladies. 

Eventually, Sarah returned from her middle eastern adventure and I started to spend more time with her friends and my theatre friends, but some of the most precious memories from my time in Seattle remain the dinners I shared with my bible study girls. Though I lost touch with some after I moved, most remain dear friends, who still make time to catch up with me whenever I am lucky enough to be on the west coast. Even though we were only in the same place for a few years, these women made my time in Seattle so rich and I am so blessed to have them in my life, even from thousands of miles away.