During this last week I couldn't help but notice how every time I woke up in the mornings I found two or three small, sticky pieces of plastic on my bed and I wondered where they were coming from. I normally sleep with the light that's in the hallway next to my room turned on, however last night our maid turned it off and I forgot to turn it back on. When I got into my bed and looked at the ceiling I saw that there were about 20 shining stars on it. It took me a while to remember that over 10 years ago, when I first came to the house I live in ('94) I got a pack of these shiny star stickers and put them all over the ceiling. The stars of course made no sense and looked like the background from a cheap sci-fi movie (I had 4 moons, each at a different phase and 5 shining stars all coming from differnt directions besides the normal stars which were all over the place) but they were still there. They were still shining, even though they had faded out through the years.
When I think back to the time I put those up I can't help but notice how things have changed. Of course trivial changes have occured: new restaurants, cinemas, cafés, you name it; but those aren't important. What I remember most is people and how, due to the school we got to, they come and go constantly, making friendship hard at times. I think you could easily divide students at ASM into two kinds: the ones that have been here pretty much since "the beginning" and those who, because of their parents' jobs will probably leave in a 1-5 year period. It's sad how you can have a great friendship with someone and have it killed because of their departure; no matter what people say, long distance friendships or other relationships don't work. Normally when someone is new to the school and leaves before a year or two, unless they really hit it off with the people there, the ties are not very hard to break. However when you have the opposite case: someone comes and leaves after 5 years at ASM, you really got to know them, to laugh with them and go places with them and that basically dies out as he/she leaves and you stay to start another year with new friendships which may in turn break up because of this same rule.
Going back to my starting point (to get carried away in a couple of lines), these stars made me think of how things were 10 years ago. I remembered my birthdays at Discovery Zone in "El Torreon" where three plastic tube-labs were a quizzical labyrinth for us in which any impossible thing could occur. I remembered one of the pictures I got taken at one of my DZ birthdays and remembered the people in it. Some of them have left and we never knew anything about them, other have come and gone and others have remained, but those which remained have changed drastically over the years, whether for good or for bad...I'm not sure. Every new year friendships are strengthened or weakened, depending on the various events that take place in our lives, and this year I feel like many of the friendships have been weakened. I see false smiles up front, back-stabbing with a straight face and fake emotions much more than I used to...that's not good. Most of the people which have either started out or ended up with us has affected our way of treating people...I think that now we refuse to be completely honest with our friends and think twice before saying what we mean. There's a Spanish saying, which translated into English goes something like this: "You should be able to count your true friends with a hand's fingers and still have fingers left over". Even if that is true, does that mean that we should lie and act falsely in front of those which aren't the best of friends? In a way, the stars that once surrounded us, some of which we never really saw as precious, are falling or fading out...
When I think back to the time I put those up I can't help but notice how things have changed. Of course trivial changes have occured: new restaurants, cinemas, cafés, you name it; but those aren't important. What I remember most is people and how, due to the school we got to, they come and go constantly, making friendship hard at times. I think you could easily divide students at ASM into two kinds: the ones that have been here pretty much since "the beginning" and those who, because of their parents' jobs will probably leave in a 1-5 year period. It's sad how you can have a great friendship with someone and have it killed because of their departure; no matter what people say, long distance friendships or other relationships don't work. Normally when someone is new to the school and leaves before a year or two, unless they really hit it off with the people there, the ties are not very hard to break. However when you have the opposite case: someone comes and leaves after 5 years at ASM, you really got to know them, to laugh with them and go places with them and that basically dies out as he/she leaves and you stay to start another year with new friendships which may in turn break up because of this same rule.
Going back to my starting point (to get carried away in a couple of lines), these stars made me think of how things were 10 years ago. I remembered my birthdays at Discovery Zone in "El Torreon" where three plastic tube-labs were a quizzical labyrinth for us in which any impossible thing could occur. I remembered one of the pictures I got taken at one of my DZ birthdays and remembered the people in it. Some of them have left and we never knew anything about them, other have come and gone and others have remained, but those which remained have changed drastically over the years, whether for good or for bad...I'm not sure. Every new year friendships are strengthened or weakened, depending on the various events that take place in our lives, and this year I feel like many of the friendships have been weakened. I see false smiles up front, back-stabbing with a straight face and fake emotions much more than I used to...that's not good. Most of the people which have either started out or ended up with us has affected our way of treating people...I think that now we refuse to be completely honest with our friends and think twice before saying what we mean. There's a Spanish saying, which translated into English goes something like this: "You should be able to count your true friends with a hand's fingers and still have fingers left over". Even if that is true, does that mean that we should lie and act falsely in front of those which aren't the best of friends? In a way, the stars that once surrounded us, some of which we never really saw as precious, are falling or fading out...
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