In 1965-66, on our way back , the AFS students from Nebraska and Iowa made a bus-trip of three weeks to Washingtion DC. During this period we grew into one big worldwide family (34 students of over twenty nationalities) and promised each other that this friendship would last a lifetime. It did for a while, we made a bus newspaper after we were all home, had a few reunions, but.....studies, careers, finding partners and founding families kept us all busy. It was very quiet for a while.

But then in 1996 our bus 23 started a turbulent second life after eight members met in Bilbao at the home of Begona Aurrecochea. Since then a reunion is scheduled once every two and a half years. Somewhere on the planet a bus member organizes a program, alternating in the southern and northern hemispheres: Netherlands 1998, Brazil 1999, Scandinavia 2001 (a trip organized by one Swedish lady and two Norwegian bus members) , the Philipines 2004 and recently Istanbul July 2006. Bus 23 involves partners and children of the original bus-members and the first grandchildren have been included. Members try to meet outside the big reunions as often as they can, when the occasion arises, the so-called mini-reunions. Forty years after our AFS experience we still walk together and certainly TALK together.