Internet Friends

When I talk about friends I've made on the internet or just talking to people on the internet in general, lots of people think of '40 year old perverted men' or something like that, that you can't make real friends there and you should _never_ meet anyone in real life whom you've only spoken to on the internet. I thinks that's pretty old fashioned. For example every au pair I got to know from England, I met first on the internet. We found each other either on an au pair site or on Facebook and agreed to a coffee meet up. I never felt unsafe or unsure whether or not the person was 'real', but I also always met them somewhere where there's other people, just to be sure. I've never had anything bad happen with people from the internet, but of course there is always the possibility. But this summer, I did something I never thought I would do, I traveled to another country, to meet up with someone I'd gotten to know online.

About three years ago I had an instragram account, a fan account to be honest, and I had quite a few followers so I spoke to lots of followers on a daily basis, I got to know one girl in particular really well, it was so much easier to talk about stuff you were going through at the time trough the internet instead of face to face, so we got pretty close even though she's a lot younger than me. We spoke on iMessage, followed each other on personal instagrams, snapchatted and even became friends on Facebook, so I just knew she was exactly who she said she was.

And so when this summer me and my friend decided to go traveling around in Europe a bit, my first suggestion was Rotterdam in Holland, where the girl I met on instagram is from. All of a sudden we'd bought our first plain tickets and we're heading to Holland after a few stops. We'd agreed to meet up in Rotterdam, and crazy enough, we did. I cannot tell you how surreal it was after so many pictures to actually see her in real life and hug her, we literally ran to each other and it was just so amazing. We went to have dinner and just walked around in town and it was definitely one of the best days of the trip.

-Jasmine