6 Ways To Celebrate Galentines From Afar

…or how to deal with long distance friendships.

It’s hard. I’m not going to sugar coat this for anyone who’s wondering what it’s like to move halfway around the world, knowing only one person (and y’know, I’m married to him, so does that count?)

I obviously want to meet people here in Seattle and Bellevue, but I still want to keep up my friendships back home! The best friendships are ones where you might not see each other in person for ages but when you do, it’s like nothing has changed and I am lucky enough to have a few of those. Social media has been useful for this, but it can also create a little FOMO (especially when my blogging pals are going to an event that I would have been invited to!)

I love the idea of Galentines, not just because I am a little (a lot) bit of a Leslie Knope, but because I have never seen the point of Valentines just being for romantic relationships.

Here are a few ways that I celebrate my awesome friends

Learn time zones

Knowing the difference between time zones has never been that much of an issue for me, because Alex would travel so much, so I was used to thinking “ok, it’s 4pm here in Bristol, so it’s 8am in San Francisco” but I’ve had to remember the other way around since moving. The world clock feature on my phone is really useful but the thing that has really helped is putting a thing on my Apple Watch which shows me the time in the UK.

Send them something that only makes sense to you two

Honestly, if I am talking to a friend, it’s fairly likely that it’s going to involve an inside reference.

Send them a text to say hi

It’s always nice to get a message randomly, it just makes you smile! I have friends who prefer to do a voice memo than a text but the sentiment is the same.

Send something in the post

I love putting together little parcels to my friends back home (which basically just end up being full of sweets and Pop Tarts) – if it wasn’t so expensive to send things home, I’d be sending so much more!

Make a date to watch a TV show you both love and talk all the way through it on Messenger

I do this with a few friends with The Good Place – I watch it when it airs at 9pm PST (which is 5am back home) then they watch it while I’m asleep because Netflix is awesome and has it straight away, then we can talk about it when I wake up. I know me and the bestie will be doing this for iZombie, assuming UK Netflix has it as soon as it airs here. We are huge Veronica Mars fans so we send each other little clips that we find (ok, mostly topless Logan gifs, no shame)

It’s not really as good as marathoning it sitting next to each other on the sofa (there is a dance to “We Used To Be Friends” which has to be done every episode, so I’m hoping the new series will have the same theme tune) but it helps to make the distance less painful.

Hype them up

Probably more useful for those friends who are bloggers and influencers, but I love introducing friends from home to people I meet here – not just because I like introducing people who I think will get on, but the more I can do to persuade friends from the UK to come and visit Seattle, the more likely I can get them to bring me some decent chocolate and bags of crisps ?

I would love to hear about any ways that other people deal with this sort of thing!