To where my curiosity leads me?

I was always wondering if online friendship can be considered as real person to person friendship.

I joined MyEC last June, and I have been enjoying my stay here pretty much so far, but there were a couple of times that I felt disappointed about friendship here.

Struggling about online friendship seems waste of time, I should be old enough to graduate from these things, but anyway I am still struggling somehow.

At the beginning of last month, I decided to visit Istanbul with my family. Well, actually my husband decided, and we started preparing for the trip. As I knew my dearest friend from EC; Yas-chan is in Istanbul, I contacted her almost everyday before our trip, just as we always do.

In the meantime, I remembered that when I was in Wyoming, the US, I met a friend from Germany; she is one of my best friends for a long time by the way. When we visited each others' countries, we always wrote post cards to our mutual friends together. So this time I decided to do the same with Yas-chan. I asked my close friends in MyEC their addresses. I knew it was very private information, but actually, they trusted me and informed me.

I was a bit worried if I could really recognize Yas-chan, even though I have seen her photos before. On my second day in Istanbul we intended to meet at a tram station close to my hotel. When I saw her face on the other side of the road, I recognized her at once, and she did as well. She was with us during the day for 5 days. We had great time together, walked around Istanbul everyday, visited many mosques, palaces, and famous places. We ate lunch and dinner, did some projects for MyEC together, and she helped us a lot by guiding and interpreting. We were online friends before, but now we became real friends.

For all those times that I was in EC and other social networks, I was trying to be honest as well as be nice. This time, I feel so happy that my friends trusted me and I proved that online friends can be real if you keep being truthful with each other, and being just the way you are. I'm very grateful to all of my close friends so much for that.

One of my online friends will come to Japan pretty soon this month, I will meet him and we are planning to cook each others countries' dishes. Also, another friend from MyEC will be in Japan at the end of June. I really look forward to seeing him as well. I felt confident that we can build real friendship starting from online this time. And I really look forward to seeing more friends in the future.

Last but not least, I would like to show my special appreciation to Yas-chan for arranging our sightseeing in Istanbul. Your discounting prices technique was really amazing;) You can be a professional tour guide only if you work out your leg muscles, and practice riding a bicycle. I really enjoyed our day trip to Princes' Island even though I got a flat tire. Hope that I can visit there again one day:D

＊This is the link to my album of Istanbul trip

Tags: friendship, online, real

32 members like this

Add a Comment

You need to be a member of EnglishClub to add comments!

Join EnglishClub

Mod Comment by Junco on July 16, 2012 at 15:44: It was a very big day today, and I had a lot of fun meeting my another online friend :D

He is from Vietnam and now living in close to my city. He visited my hometown and we spend a great time together with my Japanese friend and my daughter ;) We went to see the sea, visited Japanese garden and traditional Japanese tea house, took "Purikura", had lunch at my place, saw portable shrines, enjoyed some festive drum music, played "Wii" game, etc :) He made very delicious Vietnamese coffee for us, and brought a gift and letters from another online friend who lives the same city he is from :D

Life is good :)

Mod Comment by Junco on May 17, 2012 at 1:28: Hi, Xee Walker!

Your Japanese is much much better than my Chinese:) I can only say a couple of words in Chinese:P

I believe friends are friends either if it's real life or on-line, the people are pretty much the same. You can be true friends with on-line friends just like the ones who you have in your real life. We just need to be honest and truthful, and care each other. I have met three on-line friends so far and everybody was very nice, and I still keep in touch with them. I really look forward to meeting some more close on-line friends in near future. For the moment, I'm planning to meet my friend from Vietnam in this summer.

It's so nice that you can talk and share cultures and various ideas with friends from all over the world. I appreciate it so much:)

Comment by Xee Walker on May 16, 2012 at 6:36: Hi Junko, maybe I can say in Japanese, like "はじめまして。どうぞ　よろしく　お願いします。".haha, I just learned Japanese a little. It was interesting. Well, I want to say I always worry that whether friendship online is real or not. In my country, most people seem not like make friends on the chat room online or social network website cause they don't believe so-called friends online are considered as real friends. It seems kind offish. But it really get hurt if someone cheat you. However, it is happy that you can get a lot real friends online. It is very precious. I hope one day I can make friends online, especially someone in foreign country.

Mod Comment by Junco on April 25, 2012 at 0:45: I have just got another great opportunity to meet my online friends yesterday here in my home town.

One is from Rijeka, Croatia, and the other from Jakarta, Indonesia.

They are so sweet, and I enjoyed being with them very much :D

Mod Comment by Junco on April 18, 2012 at 2:26: Thank you , Keira!

Happy to see you here again:D

Mod Comment by Junco on April 18, 2012 at 2:25: Lama-chan!!

Yeah I'm patiently waiting for you here;)

Comment by lama amar on April 15, 2012 at 1:40: Hiii Junko!

I'd love to visit Japan...I've read and heard so much about it, moreover; one of my best friends lives there ^_* I'd certainly give you a hand lovely garden taking into consideration my former experience in gardening...kekkekeke!!

Mod Comment by Robbie on April 14, 2012 at 5:16: You're welcome Junko. Yup, I sometimes skeptical on different things.

@ Yase, do you believe in the saying "to see is to believe"? He he he... : )

Mod Comment by Junco on April 13, 2012 at 12:38: Thanks for visiting Mir Musavir!

Mod Comment by Junco on April 12, 2012 at 14:19: Lama-chan!

I have never thought that you are living "the other side of the earth." We just live a bit far, but that doesn't prevent me to visit you. And I truly wish that you have a chance to come and visit here one day, let's enjoy working together at my kitchen garden, farmer-chan!!:D