Long lost family?

[confusedpixie]

Some family members have got in touch and I have no clue what to say to them! Any ideas?

For background: My Dad has three sisters, he moved to England 26 or so years ago, two of his sisters spend half of their time in England, and half of their time in Iran (home country) and the third stayed in Iran.
Dad lost contact with the third sister (N) and hasn't spoken since, knows nothing of her life apart from that she married and had children.

N's daughter in her mid-20's contacted my older sister via facebook this morning, they are a similar age we think and they spent a couple of hours chatting via FB messages, a general catch up I think. N contacted my Mum but Mum's been out all day so didn't get a chance to reply and N's son contacted my older sister too. N has now contacted me to say hi but I don't really know what to say, has anyone contacted 'lost' family members before?

There is a language barrier as well, they all seem to be able to write very basic English but none of us know any Farsi I'm very excited as I've wanted to know about them for years, but have no idea what to say!

Treat them as you would any other stranger and get to know a bit about them. 'How are you?' isn't a bad opener. :) One of my uncles seems to have fathered a few 'secret' children in his time and one of them got in contact with my mum via a genealogy website. All he wanted really was a bit of information about the family, to know who we all were and to tell us he existed. It was nice to find out about him and there was an initial flurry of e-mails & photographs etc. but, a few years on, we've all settled back to our usual lives. Good luck

Thank you for sharing :)

I started chatting to N's daughter in the end, she's sending me a lot of pictures and she's rooting through mine, knows who we all are already! I think one of my aunts has been sharing photos the past few years.