travel boys.

We've talked about Max before, but there are other boys, from other countries (especially during summer 2010) that I haven't told you about.

These three were brothers, (one my age, two younger) and I met them in Jordan. Our families were friends when we both lived in Holland all those years ago. It was strange to see them again; to see all the ways that they had changed, and the ways that they matched up to and differed from that 8-years-old picture in my head. The second brother, halfway through dinner the first night, started bringing up memories of Holland. "Do you remember when we played in that ditch full of water?" and, "Do you remember when we ate peanut butter sandwiches at my house?" It was so strange to talk about my memories with people who were just supporting actors in those very same memories. I haven't talked to them since then.

Halfway through that summer, I went to the UAE with a group of people. He was part of our group, and we met in the hotel on the second day. Since he was the "only attractive guy here," as determined by my roommate Lauren, he was the subject of many of our late night conversations. Lauren, in particular, loved him. Their relationship was all sorts of crazy, with Lauren overanalyzing everything and saying things like, "He's such a drama king!...and I'm his drama queen!" (That is an actual sentence that she said out loud.) That ended suddenly when she called me over during a break in our Bible study. "Hey," she whispered, "guess what!" "What?" I asked. "I just heard him talking to my brother about you. He said, 'I think she's really interesting. And by interesting, I mean really pretty.'" That put an end to Lauren's obsessing. Honestly, I didn't like him. I thought he was a jerk and full of himself. Two years later, we talk about once a week. He's coming back to America at the end of May, and *hopefully* he'll visit. That's the plan, anyways. It's funny how him liking me and me hating him turned into such a good friendship. I haven't talked to him two days.

I met this last boy at a game of Ultimate Frisbee on a Friday afternoon. We didn't talk about all. (Because this is important later: his brother knocked me down during the second game. We'll come back to this.) His parents went out to dinner with my summer parents, and I met them when they came back to my house for coffee and tea. The next morning, his mom called and asked if I wanted to go to Toy Story 3 with their family and another friend. I went. He shared popcorn with me, made fun of my homeschool-ness, and asked me how I was liking Jordan. Later in the week, he promised that if I came to Ultimate that Friday, he would "protect the Lady Katherine from my falling brother." Several weeks after I met him, we (him, me, his falling brother, and our mutual friend) went to an archeological dig together. On the way home, it was just him and me. We played chess (he won) and tic tac toe (I won).

When I went back to America that August, we stopped talking after a few weeks. In the two years since then, he's come back for college, called me once, texted me occasionally, and asked me to be his Valentine. I would say that we're still friends. We haven't talked in two weeks.

Do you have any weird or funny travel friendships? Anyone you still talk to?

xo,
katie