While I was in St. Louis I also got to see one of my best friends from college, Mariah. Mariah is living in Poland at the moment, so the fact that we were even in the same country at the same time was something of a miracle. Her father kindly drove Mariah to St. Louis and she and I had a middle-school-style date where we just walked around the mall for a few hours. We should have actually allotted more time to just hanging out and wandering the mall, because we ended up running a little late to meet up with our parents at one of the restaurants nearby.
We didn’t actually get much shopping done, despite the fact that we started the afternoon with high hopes and ambitious lists. In fact, the only thing I checked off my list was handing my laptop over to the “geniuses” at the Apple Store to get a new screen because the anti-glare coating was wearing away on mine. Other than that, Mariah and I just wandered, drank a lot of coffee, and chatted. We did, however, find a cool candy store in the mall that seemed to be aimed at a different crowd than normal. I guess the best way to describe the store is as a hipster candy store.
The chocolate was all fairtrade, many of the products were locally made, and the cotton candy was, well…
this.
As short as the visit was, I’m glad to have gotten it. Mariah has been my close friend since the first year of college when we ended up in the same First Year Seminar. You were mostly assigned dorms by your FYS in an effort to create some sort of a community. As a result, she and I lived on the same hall for the first year. After that, we just sort of clicked and have been friends ever since. I’m honestly not sure if we will ever live in the same country, let alone city, again, but I’m holding out hope that we won’t go another 4 years without seeing each other.
A Jodi Abroad 