Reconnecting with the Ghost of 1987

Starting in January 1987 and all the way through that year, I had the incomparably good fortune to live in New Zealand as an exchange student through AFS.

Founded by workers with the Ambulance Field Service appalled by the carnage of World War I, AFS has a simple, straightforward goal: Promote world peace by sending high school students from all around the world to live in another country for a year. Let them discover another culture, another people, and find a new set of eyes to see the world with. The understanding they gain can change the world and help to keep us from plunging off the brink again.

I lived a year in Rotorua, on the North Island, where I attended sixth form in Edmund Rice College, later renamed John Paul College. (For those needing something to anchor this to, sixth form is the equivalent to Harry Potter's year at Hogwart's in "The Half Blood Prince.")

AFS had a number of get-togethers over the course of the year. I never thought about it at the time, but in hindsight it makes complete sense. Wherever we were from, we were in sync, going through the same highs and lows of culture shock, homesickness, conflict with our host families, bullying and acceptance at school.

I didn't get on with many of the other American students, but I made a number of friends from Thailand, Indonesia, Iceland, Spain, Japan and other countries.

Two in particular stood out: Alwin Keil and Anushka Pedris. Every time we had one of these get-togethers, the three of us would end up hanging out together. In a recent conversation, I compared the three of us recently to Harry, Ron and Hermione. Not that we got into their level of hijinks and world-saving, but the amount of time we spent together at these get-togethers. After the first one, I quickly started looking for the two of them whenever there was an AFS gathering. I cannot imagine that year without the two of them.

This was in the days before widespread email and long before the Internet had moved into the home. The sun set on 1987; and Anushka returned to Sri Lanka, Alwin returned to West Germany, and I returned to Pittsburgh. The times and distance being what they were, we fell out of touch.

I've thought about them a lot the past 30 years, but when I've looked for them online, it's been like trying to find one particular drop of water in the ocean, or a specific grain of sand in the Gobi. You can Google "Hinako Tanaka," but if you don't know Japanese, good luck understanding the results. And Facebook helps you find only people who use it.

I still haven't found Alwin.

But I connected with Anushka last week, and that 17-year-old I used to be is somewhere inside, doing cartwheels in a school uniform I haven't worn in three decades.