The world through my American eyes

Time flies and life goes on. I haven't been in touch with my dad in a couple of years and last week I attended a seminar about internet strategies and how to use new medias such as blogs and Facebook in a companys marketing.

I've been keeping a blog for some time now but Facebook never interested me. Rather the opposite actually, but after the seminar I decided to look into the possibilities for companies to market them selves on Facebook. So I registered myself.

I wasn't looking for anything in paritcular but I found some of my friends there and talked some with them. But besides of that I really weren't that fascinated. Beeing somewhat of an Internet Junkie I actually thought that Facebook was to screwed to use. I referred to it as what happens when you fire your crack addicted programers before they deliver the final product.

Anyway I was doing the least possible this Friday night when it struck me, what if my dad was on Facebook too? The chances where probably quit slim but as it is one of the largest social networks and it is world wide i went ahead. So I searched for him and there was something like 300 with the same name as him. So I thought Fat chance one of them would be him, but I was really bored so I started to browse pictures and after a while I saw a picture of a guy who actually could have been him. When I look at it now I rellay can't understand why I hesitated but I wanted to be 100 percent sure so I wrote him a short message.

The timediference is 6 or 7 hours so this must have been in the afternoon over there and of course there was no answer.

I searched his friends for more clues to convince myself that he really was the right guy and the next 'clue' was a another familiar face of what ought to be my cousin Sarah so I sent her a message to. She must have thought that a nutcase sent it or something =)

Exited as I where I relly couldn't go to bed without knowing if this actually where my family in the US so I looked at more and more pictures and finally I found my aunts, their names where correct and the picture of Chris just had to be her.

Now I was convinced so I sent a message to my aunt and a second message to my dad. The joy I felt was undescribeable but that wasn't all, I was really nervous as well. How would they respond? Would they feel the same joy that I did?

Well I really had to go to sleep but when I woke up to go to the bathroom at 6 in the morning I just had to check my cellphone for messages I'd recieved during the night and two of them where from Chris and Sarah! I jumped out of bed and started up a computer to read what they had replied!

Now, almost a week after I've had daily contact with my aunts, my dad and I have written to Sarah a couple of times. I've also seen my children establish connections with their family on the other side of the Atlantic and every time I hear from my relatives my heart skips a beat. It's for real and the love and joy is almost as if taken from a chick flick.

After this week I'm really hooked on Facebook and even more on my family.