Mesdames et messieurs je vous presente Thomas! Ladies and Gentlemen I present to you Thomas! I should have labeled this section "unlikely friendships" because here's another curve ball story for you! So the story starts with a friend I had a friend who had a pen pal from South Korea. I was always super jealous when she recieved letters, packages and pictures from her pen pal. I asked her how she found her and she told me about a website called "Students of the World" meant to help connect you with someone who speaks your target language that wants to learn your native language, sort of like a language exchange. I decided my freshman year I wanted a pen pal from France to help me with my French homework. I sent serveral emails out to potential pen pals and before I knew it I was exchange addresses and skype usernames. We mainly talked through social media and video chatting. We sent letters to each other often and packages with small gifts whenever we could (remember I was working with a no job high school budget). I became enamored with the French Language and culture.  I took French 1-4, AP French and became a student aide to the French Teacher. For the longest time I thought I wanted to be a French teacher and yes I even sometimes wore a beret to school! 

After four years of emails, letters, skype calls, packages, social media I wanted to visit France. Thomas so kindly volunteered as my tour guide and so graciously showed me around France. During my few weeks there I learned so much and got to finally meet my virtual friend. My first day in France consisted of a taxi driver trying to scam me into paying $80 for a cab ride to the local LDS church since I arrived on Sunday and wanted to attend church, then having my uber driver argue with another cab driver he almost hit, attending church in French, meeting Thomas while I was in the middle of asking for a new room since all of the light bulbs were burnt out. They ended up having to put us in a single bed room that night so we got really close that night! Later on we switched hotels since since we had to stay in one while in Paris because Thomas is not from Paris he is from Strasbourg. France was such an expierence but some take aways include; no refills and no ice, small portions, lots of walking and metro rides, lots of skinny and beautiful people, French people are nice if you make an effort to speak French, and don't say yes to taking picture with someones pet orange pigeon because he's just a scammer who's going to demand money from you after. Honestly, the whole trip felt like a dream come true. 

Hold up, hold up, can we switch the language?! (Tiktok Reference) Fast forward some time later I am living in Riverton, Utah and Thomas wants to come visit me! I finally got to show him what portions should look like. I was sure to take him to a gas station to show him those EXTRA LARGE cups of refillable soda. His trip included more Latter Day Saint church historical sights like Temple Square tour in French, This is the Place monument, the Joseph Smith Building, The Beehive house, etc. But we also got to enjoy some of the outdoors at Utah lake and one my friends had a Razr vehicle we went driving around the Utah mountians. We also got to go on an indoor ferris wheel at a huge sporting goods store. It was strange answering the question how we knew each other because its just so unheard but at the same time I felt so lucky to have made a friend in such a unique way.