School Nostalgia

I gave into some pressure and joined Facebook, after several friends kept inviting me. Plus, the local bike club here is surprisingly active on it.

While fiddling around, I decided to search for a bunch of people I went to junior high school and high school with. Junior high was a bit unusual compared to others, because I went to a DoD school for American kids in Frankfurt, (West) Germany, and for obvious reasons it was tough to keep in touch - families moved and so forth. Dad worked at the U.S. Consulate and my classmates were so-called "army brats" or kids of civilian employees (Justice Dept, State Dept, etc). I loved it there - aside from living overseas and getting to see a lot of Europe, I had many friends in school. We all got along, probably since everybody was used to moving a bunch, my peers were all relatively laid back. We all realized we were all in this together. ;)

To my surprise, I got a hit - Trenna (Keiper) Bingham, a junior high classmate! We've traded a few mails and it's so fun contacting somebody from back then.

After more searching, I found more info on Frankfurt American Junior High School. One alum created a page for FAJHS, and a link to a Yahoo Group! I requested to join and hope that goes through soon. Maybe I'll find a few others and see what they've been up to.

There are other websites underway, FAHS.org and FAJHS.org, so I'll keep an eye on those.

Anyway, Holly's page has some maps of Frankfurt. The High School map is fun for me to look at, because I lived near it!

On that map, circled in the upper left near the word "Ginnheim", was Frankfurt Elementary School #2, where I finished 6th grade. A bit lower to the right, under the word "Schurz-Sdl" is a small street named Plieninger Strasse - that's where I lived. Across the yellow road on the map, is the "Amerik. Hochschule" circled with a pen. The Consulate my dad worked at is somewhere around the Grüneburgpark area, but I can't find it.

Both FAHS and FAJHS don't exist anymore. The bases were closed down, areas decommissioned and returned to Germany. Now they just exist virtually!