Saturday, August 16, 2014

Those I love to spend time with in Frankfurt

There are a number of people with whom I have gotten to know well and can say I really enjoy spending time with here in Frankfurt.  What a wonderful change from when I first moved to Germany.   The loneliness I felt initially, when starting over my social circle completely from scratch, was very tough for me.  This was such a daunting and heartbreaking thing.  But it's part of the deal that comes with moving to a new city, and is something one must navigate through initially before finding a group of close friends once more.  Now I definitely do not feel lonely, and my week and weekends fill quickly with plans
:-D  I've chosen my friends carefully.  Each of them are wonderful in different ways.  So, here are the people I love spending time with:



Somayeh.  She has rapidly become one of my very closest friends here in Frankfurt.  She and I work together at Kid's Camp, which is how we met.  We were placed together as partners during our workplace cleaning day back this past winter.  So she and I were stuck together in a classroom, cleaning, for 8 hours.  Oy.  The time ended up flying by.  She and I talked nonstop the entire time, about relationships, our families and our lives.  I was shocked to find we had an immediate click.  Since then, she and I began to spend time together outside of work and within about two months, we had grown to be good friends.  However within the past 3 months or so, I would say we've become much closer.
Somayeh and I can talk about anything.  I always feel excited to see her each week.  Whenever we hang out I tell myself, ok, we will hang out for just 2 hours and then I will head to the gym.  I check my watch later on to find that actually, 3 and a half hours have passed and we still have more to talk about.  She and I can talk for hours and hours.  The time flies by.  We have a great connection.
Somayeh is an excellent listener.  She is fun to be with and an interesting conversationalist.  Somayeh is confident and assertive, a trait I very much admire in her.  She is open-minded, loyal and non-judgmental.  She is someone I feel I can talk to and be open with, without fear of judgement.  She is classy and poised.  She is an excellent dresser ;-) another trait in her I aspire to eventually have more in common with her.  She is someone I have come to love spending time with and consider a close friend.  I am blessed to have met her and to be able to call her a friend.



Francine is another person to whom I have grown quite close.  We also work together at Kid's Camp.  I cannot recall the exact moment we got to talking but I do remember liking her immediately.  Francine has a warmth about her that makes you comfortable right away, and happy to be in her presence.  She and I have spent quite a bit of time together over the past few months outside of work.  We have cooked together a couple times (cookies and Oreo truffles), gone out for dinner and have had picnics and played board games.  Francine is great fun to spend time with.  The time flies with her.  Francine loves, loves, loves to talk :-D and she is filled with fascinating stories and insights.  Yet she is also an excellent and empathetic listener.  She is incredibly open-minded and loving.  She is supportive and kind.  Francine is self-possessed and intelligent.  She has a very fun sense of fashion.  I always enjoy seeing what she is wearing day to day at work.  Almost like Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City.  Sometimes very sweet and feminine, other times trendy, somethings a bit eccentric and attention grabbing, other times hippy-ish and laid back.  She is such a fun dresser.  Francine is someone I love to spend time with and feel very lucky to know.




Judith is the third good friend whom I met at Kid's Camp, where we both work.  She is the first friend I made at work.  Within about a week or two of beginning work there, I asked if she might like to hang out sometime outside of work.  I could sense she would likely be someone I would click well with and like.  I turned out to be very right.  Judith and I hang out often.  We take walks together, get tea, sometimes grab something sweet to eat, have enjoyed a number of all-you-can-eat American style brunches on Sundays and have gone out dancing together a few times (when she is able to talk me into it ;-)) as I am not much of a partier.
Judith has a sweetness about here that reminds me of my close friend, Sarah from home.  Judith is incredibly kind-hearted.  She is easy to talk to and approachable.  A very empathetic listener.  She is also lots of fun to be with.  She and I have gone out dancing a few times now and I always have a blast with her.  Judith is a generous and loving friend.  In fact, for my 29th birthday just a few weeks ago, she contacted Christian and together they planned a surprise birthday dinner for me.  I was so shocked and deeply touched.  Judith is someone I feel so overjoyed to have as my friend.


 
Becca and I met when I first arrived to Prague last September, 2013 during my TEFL program.  She and I did not become friends right off the bat.  Instead it happened a bit more slowly.  However I was shocked to find we had a great click.  She reminds me a lot of my close friend, Jenna from back home in New Hampshire.  During the first couple weeks of TEFL, there was a day when a few of us wandered around for the afternoon.  We sat in the Kampo park, strolled across the Charles Bridge and spent a number of hours together that afternoon.  I found myself talking to Becca quite a bit, and finding her really interesting and fun to talk to.
Upon my move to Germany, Becca and I stayed in touch.  She and I took a weekend trip together to Salzburg, Austria back in March of this year.  This was a blast!  Then she came to Frankfurt to visit me this past June for a long weekend.  I loved having her and showing her around the city.  We had a great time.
Becca is an intelligent, thoughtful and interesting Person.  I love hearing her opinions about various topics.  She is romantic and idealistic yet at the same time, logical and fairly realistic.  She seems to have a great balance of both of these viewpoints.  She is fun to spend time with, generally very easy going and open to most anything.  Becca is confident in herself and her viewpoints.  I love this about her.  She and I can talk easily for hours.  I feel comfortable around her and always really enjoy her company.  She is a person I feel very happy to have met and know.  I hope our paths will cross again at some point.  If we lived closer to one another, I could see us being great friends. 

 
Dali is ironically from the Czech Republic, yet we met upon my moving to Germany.  Dali himself had moved here recently as well as his girlfriend is German, so he moved here to be with her.  He and I met in a weekly conversation group that I had begun attending in order to hopefully make friends, which clearly was a success :-)  After a few meetings with the group, I noticed he seemed warm, intelligent and friendly, so I sent him a message via the meeting group website asking if he might like to get together sometime.  He responded yes, for sure.  Since then we have gotten together roughly once a week.  He is the friend I have known the longest since I have been in Germany, so about 9 months we have been friends now.  We do lots of things together, from getting tea or a small meal, to walking around Frankfurt, taking photos or browsing in bookstores.  We have similar interests in photography, travel and reading.
Dali is realitsic, logical and intelligent.  This makes him a great person to talk to.  He is also warm and funny, so lots of fun to be with.  He is kind and caring.  He is an avid traveler and photographer, so this is something we share often.  I love to hear about his trips with his girlfriend, Ricarda and see photos he took from their travels.  He is someone I always feel very happy to spend time with, and a person I would absolutely call one of my close friends here in Germany. 

 
I met Christian, but he perfers to go by Chris, at Kids Camp.  Another work friend ;-)  Chris began working at Kids Camp this past winter.  During his first few weeks, he happened to be shadowing in my classroom a few times.  He and I clicked immidiately.  We chatted easily and about all sorts of fun things.  The afternoons always flew by when he was in the classroom with me.
 
Chris is someone who is very easy to talk to.  He is warm, interested in others, a great listener and great fun to chat with.  He is equally funny as well as interesting.  I find myself laughing in his company a lot.  We have gotten tea/coffee together a few times now and I always really enjoy this.  We have a great time!  He is someone I am glad to have as a friend and colleague.  I always feel relieved when I walk out onto the playground and he is one of the people out there.  I know I can have some fun conversations then :-)

 
Travis is my only American friend, believe it or not!  He is from the south.  So we enjoy lots of conversations reminiscing about things we miss from back home.  Travis and I have gotten burgers together a few times now, as we are always on the hunt for a decent one (burgers over here in Europe just do NOT compare to anything one can get in America).  Despite that we disagree on what makes a burger good (his ideal burger would be something with lettuce, tomatoe, cheese and that is it.  Whereas mine would have bacon, mushrooms, onions, spinach, cheese, etc), we still enjoy the search for a good one and the sampling in the meantime.  
Travis is fun to spend time with and an interesting conversationalist.  He is generous and kind.  He is smart and well read.  He is an avid reader like myself and often asks me for book recommendations, which makes me feel way cool :-D
We dont know one another that well yet as he is a rather new friend, but from what I know so far, I am glad to have him as a friend of mine and really enjoy hanging out with him. 

 
Jana is the final friend Ive made at Kids Camp thus far.  She was the teacher-in-Training within my classroom.  Over time while working with her, I realized she is actually an incredibly sweet and lovely young woman.  So one day I asked if she might like to get together sometime outside of work.  She gave me an enthusiastic yes.  Since then, Jana and I have hung out a number of times together.  We get tea or ice cream, sometimes food or take walks.
Jana is incredibly loving and kind.  Sometimes I would walk into class and she would embrace me with a warm hug out of the blue.  She is affectionate and just a generally happy person. 
She is a caring friend and concerned listener.  She loves speaking English and loves learning new words and trying to improve.  Jana is sensitive and open minded.  I always really enjoy spending time with and talking to her. 

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