so. excited.

(Kayla and me at Schonnbrünn Palace in Vienna, circa March 2009)

There is really no way for me to properly express how excited I am to announce this.

Kayla Marie Clark is moving to Germany in less than 2 months. I want to jump up and down and cry from joy at the same time. I basically had that reaction when she called me last night and told me that she had accepted a nanny position in Rosenheim (which is only a train ride away from where I'll be teaching). She has Skyped with the family, emailed them for weeks and is finally accepting the job through an au pair organization and her German will get to improve soooo much!

Kayla, Caroline and Lindsay were my 3 closest friends in Salzburg (though I had so many other close friends as well...too many to name). My friend Erica and I were recently discussing friendships and how there are some friends who are more or less dispensible. They fill a void and then when you part from them, new friends fill that same void (although you still love and care about the old friends). No one fills the Kayla, Caroline and Lindsay voids. They are irreplaceable.

Last year, as my 22nd birthday approached, I told Lindsay all I really wanted was to spend it with the 4 of us together. She flew to Oklahoma the week before my birthday and we ate wonderful meals together, reminsced with JC and Hunt, toured Oklahoma and watched episodes of The Alps. A few months later, when JC's girlfriend told him he couldn't ever be friends with me again, Kayla heard about it and called me. I told her that it was annoying and upsetting that I was losing a friend of 4 years over something so petty. This made her far more upset than I ever imagined and she called me back the next day and said, "Can you pick me up from the airport on Thursday?". When I was having a weird panic attack about moving back here (which was odd, since that was the goal toward which I had been working for months on end), I told Caroline that I would probably spend my last weekend in Stillwater crying because I had to leave a place I really love. She booked a ticket soon after and spent my final weekend in Stillwater with me and made it one of the best weekends ever.  During the short time I spent in Oklahoma between Salzburg and Vienna, these girls paid hundreds of dollars, missed classes and work, and put their lives on hold just to come to Oklahoma and see me. I repeat: no one can ever fill the Kayla, Caroline, Lindsay voids.

If Caroline and Lindsay found jobs over here (and this is really not out of the question), then I would cry for 3 days straight and probably pay for all of their plane tickets.