Feliz Navidad, Espana! (Merry Christmas, Spain)

Saying goodbye is one of the hardest things a person can do, even if it’s just for a little while. For a teenage girl to be leaving her best friend for a whopping three and a half weeks is never easy. My best friend, Gadea, goes to boarding school with me and lives in Madrid, Spain, when she’s not at school. I only see her during the school year, and after this year, she will return to Spain to finish the rest of her high school career there. Everyday spent with her now is precious. This is why Gadea departing to Spain and me departing to Connecticut for a three-and-a-half-week Christmas vacation was hard for both of us. Luckily, our computers would keep us in touch.

“I wish I could text you or something … like, we have to plan what times you can talk. You have to message me your hours,” I said in a sad voice, while hugging Gadea in front of the bus. I could tell she was excited to go back to Spain and see all her friends and family, but we both knew we would have loads to catch up on and only slim hours that overlapped to be able to talk. The hours in Spain are drastically different from here, so when I slept late, I would wake up to see six IMs from her saying she missed me, and I needed to wake up and talk to her, but by then she was already offline.

We kept in touch writing on each other’s walls, but I had funny stories I needed to tell her and really, I just missed her—a lot. One night, I was on my computer in my room when I saw she signed on. I jumped up in excitement and we IMed, until she ended up falling asleep on the computer.

Christmas day came, and I left a video on her wall with both my dogs and my family saying hello to hers as they sat around my living room with their breakfast. A few hours later, I received a notification on my blackberry that said, “Gadea Perez de Guzman has recorded a video on your wall” Confused, I walked over to my computer and logged into Facebook. Gadea didn’t have a good enough computer to record videos, so maybe it was a false notification. I looked at my wall and there she was, with a huge grin from ear to ear, smiling and telling me she had received a Macbook for Christmas last night! Filled with joy, I messaged her and told her to get online as soon as she could. Twenty minutes later, she logged on and I sent her a video chat request. From that day on, we would video chat everyday and catch up on what happened that day.

Being able to video chat with someone in the next town, state or even across the country is an amazing feat in technology. The fact that I could see and speak to my best friend through the computer on Christmas day was one of the best presents I received that year. Video chatting is currently very big with teens, and it definitely has its benefits for me, as my friends come from such far-reaching places as Spain, Bermuda, New York, Nigeria, etc. Having the ability to video chat made my Christmas so much more special because I got to see my best friend, who was thousands of miles away, as if she was right there in my living room.