Points of Departure: Life Turned Us into Sisters
Nicole Chabaneix (CAS’12) and Allison Bitto (SAR’12)
When Allison Bitto stepped off the elevator onto the 15th floor of Warren Towers almost four years ago, a complete stranger came up and gave her a hug. That stranger turned out to be Nicole Chabaneix, who says the two developed “an instant friendship.”
“When she came over and gave me a hug,” says Bitto (SAR’12), “the first thing my mom said to me was, ‘What a nice person. You’re really going to get along with her.’ She couldn’t have been more right. From that moment, we were inseparable.”
The friends come from two very different places—Chabaneix (CAS’12) is from Peru, and Bitto from North Reading, Mass.—but science classes, their jobs as BU tour guides, and many late nights studying together solidified a bond that they both say will last for the rest of their lives. In fact, they now consider each other sisters. “It’s even Facebook official,” Chabaneix says.
After living together this past year in StuVi2, the best friends will soon find themselves separated by more than 4,000 miles. Chabaneix, a biology major, will be studying whales in Alaska this summer, while human physiology major Bitto will be attending Columbia University to become a nurse practitioner. In the meantime, they are enjoying the present—baking cupcakes, raising a pet plant in their apartment, and marveling at the “ESP” of their simultaneous text messages to each other.
“We have a saying,” says Chabaneix. “Chance let us meet. Time made us friends. And life turned us into sisters.”
Additional editing by Kara Siebein (COM’12).
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