Sonia has been one of my dearest friends for more than 16 years.  I remember when I first saw Sonia at Gurdwara camp during the summer of 1999.  She was sitting in the front row of class reciting all of the prayers and religious teachings that we were there to learn.  I recall being in awe at her knowledge and wondered how she learned it so quickly…I even sat next to her hoping her intelligence would rub off on me.  Instead, I found myself sitting next to a very friendly, sweet and genuine girl.  We whispered to each other during class and every class after and immediately became friends as we found our common love to laugh, dance and be silly together.  Our friendship continued to flourish quickly as our “desi crew” grew and seeing each other became a regular affair.  Over the years we spent as much time together as we could making up dances, planning birthday parties, assigning fruit code names to our crushes and making any excuse to have get-togethers.  We even had our own hand/arm shake…”AHRI”!  We then took our camaraderie to a new collegiate level as we both began attending the UW for undergrad.  Sonia’s passion for dance, leadership and our culture brought her to become the Captain of the UW Bhangra Team- GO Gajjde Punjabi!  As her friend and pupil, I knew that when Sonia was on the dance floor, she meant business!  Sonia then left for another adventure in Florida where she started her journey as a professional in Optometry school.  Although we were in different time zones we continued to talk and keep in touch as often as we could and regardless of how long it had been it always seemed like we had just talked yesterday.  Although Sonia may be petite in size, she has an enormous heart.  She not only is intellectual, graceful, loving and driven, but she has a zest for life that many people, including me, strive for.  I had the honor of being one of her bridesmaids a couple summers ago when she got married to her amazing husband Karandeep aka “Papa”, so I couldn't imagine getting married without her either!