Three of the bloggers I follow have inspired me to write this post.Gretchen from Average suburbia who wrote about a picture day, then it was Leah from Leah thoughts, who posted pictures of the past 6 years of her life visiting the pumpkin patch and finally Bella from One Sister’s rant, when she wrote what and who inspires her.
So here you go:
Back in the USSR we did not have picture days. Every day, year after year we looked the same except for the holidays – first day of school (always September 1st), last day of school (always May 31st), May 9th – WWII Victory day and I think one more November 7th – Great October Socialist Revolution.
Take a look and tell me if you can recognize me!
and one more picture, so you can understand the whole concept:
I think all the girls look like French Maids. Hmm...who thought of this uniform?
A few years ago, I discovered Russian facebook for old classmates, co-worker, neighbors…. when I first found out about this website, I went crazy….. I could not sleep, I could not eat,(I lost 10 lbs, I should find something exciting like this again. It helps me to lose weight). I was on my PC night and day, day and night trying to find my old classmates and of course I wanted to find my old flame, wanted to know how is life treating him.
Most all of my classmates, stayed on the same side of the world. I am the one who left them behind and crossed the ocean to come here, so my wish to find them was greater than theirs to find me….. and so I did. I found people I did not even remember anymore, some of them found me, when I did not want to be found. I also found out that one of my classmates became my “relative” through my husband, don’t ask me how, it’s very complicated to figure out all the cousins now. I even found my favorite teacher, who lives in Israel now, whom I promised to call and never did (shame, shame, shame).
Lucky for me I get to travel for my work, so a few years ago when I worked in Switzerland, I went to Germany for one day to meet up with two friends of mine. One of them was none other than my first love! The excitement was way too high, I could not believe that after 25 years we are seeing each other again even if only for 24 hours.
It was wonderful to meet them and to sit and talk all night about how our life has turned out, what had been achieved, what had been lost….. It’s been 3 years since we’ve met and I still vividly remember how great the whole adventure was…..
Meeting my classmates 25 years later.
My “American” classmates (the ones who left Russia for a better life) had organized the reunion in New York. Unfortunately I was not able to attend that event due to my mom’s health issues at that time., but I found another way to meet up with them.
One of the funniest moments from all this experience is that one of the girls I went to school with lives only 45 minutes away from me. I could not believe that I had to go on the Russian website to find her right here in Michigan living side by side with me for the past 20 years.
Oh boy, what an exciting time it was for all of us, looking for old friends, co-workers, teachers, neighbors, finding them and then……..forgetting why we did it in the first place. Now like everything else it has become a history and the rush of it has calmed down. We talk less and less to each other, we might remember to send each other “Happy Birthday” or “Happy New Year” cards, we went back to our old routines, our every day worries and problems, our every day life.
…..Frankly I find it comforting to know that no matter what happens in life – excitement of finding old friends, grief of losing the love ones, life as we know it will always comes back to normal. We might not be the same returning from one ordeal or the other, but everything around us will be as usual as before we went on to our journey…..
Ariana, first of all, how wonderful to look at these old photos! Gosh, they’re wonderful! Second, what a great post, sister! I am honored to have been part of the trio who inspired you to write it. Truly honored. And I’m so glad you did! I find that reminiscing is one of life’s beautiful pleasures. How exciting to rediscover old friends, old flames and reacquaint yourself with their new lives! You truly have a “bella vita” but I think in part it’s cause you and your spirit are so beautiful! I’m certain your old classmates thought it lovely to meet up with you again! And look how slim and elegant you look now! Sigh. I wish I still had the same body I had back in high school! hee hee!
It was great Bella and by the way did I mentioned that I lost 10 lbs while going through all my emotions! I don’t look like this anymore and I think the biggest reason is because I don’t have look good before my old flame anymore, my husband loves me the way I am
That’s what I love about Facebook. I’m not good at checking in day to day or leaving funny quips on my wall, but I found friends from girl scouts that I hadn’t seen in almost 30 years. So far I’ve only met up with one of them in person, but I’m hopeful that I’ll get to see more of them. I love reminiscing about how much fun we had together when we were children. It doesn’t seem that long ago.
I still want to go back and to try to see my old classmates and people I went to university with, but the more I think about it, the more I get upset about how old we all are.
Ariana, how lucky you are to have seen your classmates again. It must have been a very interesting experience. I’ve never been to odnoklassniki.ru…
Olga, it was beyond interesting, I could not sleep of weeks afterwords!
So much fun to look through the old pictures!!!! My 10th high school reunion was last year and I wasn’t able to fly to Russia. I was so upset about that! But I was able to look through pictures of the reunion (on odnoklassniki:)).
You crush was very cute in 7th grade:)
Isn’t odnoklassniki.ru great. I went really crazy on it for a while. I do want to go back some day and take my kids there too. I don’t know when…..
This was really fun to read and I enjoyed the photos. I have found many old friends on Face Book too. I think it’s a wonderful resource! There is no other way I would have found these friends.
The funny thing about facebook is when I signed up for it, my son left facebook for google+.
I really enjoy it and I only use it to reconnect with people.
Thank you for your nice words and I’m so glad I provided some inspiration to you. I love those photos. That’s great you have them! And you don’t look very much different than from 7th grade! What an amazing thing to be able to reconnect with these people you left behind — not another school for, but another country. It is truly amazing who we can find in life now.
Yes, it was pretty cool to meet up with my classmates and it also made me realize that the world is very, very small and with the technology we can break the borders and time.
Love, love, love this piece! You are right, the uniforms do make the girls look like french maids…hm….There is something about connecting with people who knew you when you were young. It is more than just the people themselves, it’s also that they are part of a time and a place that is gone and they are the only ones who can remember it as you do. I would think in your circumstances it make it even more so.
Thank you Gretchen, it was very special and wonderful at the same time. I want to go back there one day and see more of my friends from my previous life. My old time girlfriend gave me a bottle of wine, that was produced the year we were born. We made a pact that we will open it when we will see each other again. Well it has been 20 years almost 21 now and we still don’t have a date of when and where we will meet up. I’m worried about the wine, I’m not sure it’s drinkable anymore.
I LOVE the old classroom photo.
Thank you for visiting my blog and thank you for signing up too. I have few more black and white pictures from my school days, I will post them one day.