Making new friends

I'm remembering what it's like to be overseas, although the last time I did it was in Europe 12 years ago. Unless you go somewhere without any foreigners (like you or who speak your common language), you will in short order find yourself meeting fellow travelers. Here, it's mostly teachers, but we're still travelers. Travelers get pretty good at giving up their life stories over a beer or a short walk. It's amazing the details people will divulge to relative strangers. I'm guilty of this.

It reminds me of kindergarten. How did you manage to make friends in kindergarten? You just met other kids. Hi pretty much did it. Then it was off to the swingset or monkey bars.

What gets really weird is after a few times of hanging out and trying new adventures together, friends run out of things to talk about. The struggle is to figure out if they like each other because they're compatible and have similar tastes and sensibilities, or if they were a little desperate to find friends and told a few too many intimate details over a beer.

I think that travelers also tend to be a little strange, myself included, because we are going to strange lands and getting out of our comfort zones, plus we don't like to be grounded for very long.