With similar hair color, hair length, height and glasses, juniors Maria Gerega and Mariya Kaganskaya are often mistaken for twins as they stroll down the halls together.
    Junior Katherine Hang is among the many who have made such a mistake.
“I first saw them at freshmen orientation,” Hang said. “I saw two girls with the same hair and then they turned around. They both had glasses and looked so much alike. I had Kaganskaya in my Reg, and I thought, ‘Cool I have a twin in my Reg.’”
    Gerega and Kaganskaya have known each other for a little over a decade, after first meeting in a gymnastics class at the age of five. They did not immediately become best friends, however. They actually despised one another and were “enemies.”
    “I hated her,” Gerega said. “Especially when I found out that her birthday was a day before mine. First she had my name, and now she almost had the same birthday as me."
    Time eventually brought them together. Gerega enrolled into French-American International School in fourth grade, where Kaganskaya already attended. Realizing that they had common interests, they started to talk, and, from there, their friendship blossomed. "I can't really remember how exactly we started to talk, but I know that by fifth grade we were best friends," Kaganskaya said.
    Fast-forward to high school, where even in Lowell’s stressful environment, Gerega and Kaganskaya still find time for each other.     
    Some twins (including my twin sister Kayla and I) plan five classes together and spend more time at home together. Gerega and Kaganskaya are twin-like in that aspect. “We do almost everything together,” Kaganskaya said. “We have three classes together and it’s really funny because it’s like ‘See you in two mods, don’t miss me too much.”
    Not only do the girls spend their school lives together, they shop together, stay up all night on the phone with one another and even go on vacations together. “Every winter, our families rent a house in Tahoe for a week,” Gerega said. “Mariya and I love skiing and cross country.”
    Though the girls spend a large amount of time together, they also pursue individual interests.
    Gerega likes movies, especially foreign films, and she hopes to travel the world. “In middle school, my parents and I would travel around the United States, to Canada and to Mexico,” Gerega said. “Then, we moved on to exploring Europe. I've been to France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Austria and Ukraine. I can't get enough of going to Europe. There's just so much to do there.”
    Kaganskaya spends her time getting hands-on experience in the arts singing for the San Francisco Girls’ Chorus. "My mom is a professional musician and she wanted me to be that 'cute little girl on stage,’” Kaganskaya said. “So I auditioned and got in."
    Gerega supports Kaganskaya and watches her shows, which she said, are “spectacular.”
    “Lately I’ve been going to her practices a lot,” Gerega said. “I also go to her concerts. It's just amazing to hear the sound 20 girls produce together.”

    Despite their differences and almost identical names, the girls are often asked, “Oh my God, are you guys twins?” They don’t quite understand these reactions. “We don’t look anything like,” Kaganskaya said. “We just don’t see it.”
    Though Gerega and Kaganskaya may not understand why people continue to mistakenly identify them as twins, they do have some twin-like aspirations.
    "We have this dream that we'll go to college together," Gerega said. "Then we'll get married and our husbands will be best friends, and we'll live in a duplex and our children will grow up to best friends."