Connections in the Online Landscape

     Using Knapp's relationship model, I'm going to share how I made a friend 9 years ago, who I still keep in touch with today, and even traveled halfway across the world to meet.

    Our initiation phase started when we saw each other's profiles on a language exchange app. She was looking to learn English and I was looking to learn Mandarin Chinese with an interest in learning Korean in the future, and she spoke both. I don't remember which one of us reached out to the other, but our language goals were compatible, so we started talking.

    We started practicing with each other, getting to know each other and using the language skills we'd developed so far to hold basic conversations. When one of us made a mistake, the other would correct them. We both gained knowledge in our target languages and information about one another. 

    Korean speaking has a formal language, used for people older or those you don't know well. We decided to drop honorifics after getting to know each other better when speaking Korean. This was during the phase where we'd gotten a bit more comfortable with each other.

    We became close friends, talking to each other often and decided to use an app other than the language exchanging platform to talk. The apps we've used have changed a lot over the years but some that we have used have been KakaoTalk, WeChat, Whatsapp, and Instagram. We'd talk about our friendship to our other friends and family as well.

    I'd say we'd "bonded" once we started sending physical letters and packages to one another. She lived in China at the time that we were mailing each other things, and unfortunately a lot of the letters and packages we'd sent never arrived, but sometimes they did! But this showed that we trusted one another enough to share our physical locations with the other.

    Last year, I traveled for 6 months. She lives in South Korea now and I decided that I would spend a few weeks there to stop in and meet her in-person for the first time in our 8-years (now 9) of friendship. We did a lot of activities together, and to both of our surprise, we actually didn't feel awkward at all! We'd both thought that it would feel strange to see each other or that we may be different than we'd expected, but we both had a great time.

    Here's a short video I made and posted onto my YouTube channel that includes some thinsg we did together. I had permission from her to include her in the video, so I'm happy to share with you all!
Bus Adventure in Seoul, South Korea