What has changed in 17 years?

Seventeen years ago I returned home from a semester abroad at Tel Aviv University. Grandma Sonia funded my adventure where I left the comforts of Worcester, MA and Clark University and set off for Israel. It was an amazing experience - a college semester without drinking every weekend or really studying. The pictures tell all - some told more months later when the film was developed. I made a few close friends, Elise Horn and Julie Baskin who went to Duke and Rachel Rosenberg who went to Wesleyan. The four of us ran every day, went to the beach, traveled, studied a very minimal amount, and ate a lot of chocolate spread, poppy seed ice cream and shwarma; we lived an extraordinary existence. Sadly, I lost touch with my friends following college.

Thanks to the Internet, 3 years ago I received a random email from Rachel who had Googled my name and found me in Southern AZ. Rachel just came to SLC for a visit. Being together and seeing each other after 17 years - life felt like nothing changed since our friendship began almost 2 decades ago. Well...

• Lisa Cohne is now Lisa Khadjenoury
  
• Rachel Rosenberg is now Rachel Troutman


• Setareh, Arian and Emma are in the world.
  
• The days when Rachel went to a professor's office at TAU at a specified time and typed into the computer to communicate with her parents who typed back within seconds -what a phenomenon - the rest of us used an asimone to make an international phone call at the pay phone along a busy street.
  
• Lisa and Rachel have Master's Degrees
  
• Elise and Julie are MD's (somewhere out there)
  
• Rachel continued running
  
• Lisa continued eating (although chocolate still belongs on a Petite Beurre in Israel)


• I returned home early from travels in Turkey to be a camp counselor at the JCC, Sayeh is now a camp counselor at the JCC.


• Film took time to develop and certain events were not recalled until the pictures came back.
  

Despite the list and an enormous lapse of time, my visit with Rachel felt like we had only been apart for a long weekend. I can't wait until the next time we get together.