small, small world

So I had a pretty surreal experience last night. I found out just how amazingly small this world really is.

My co-worker Karina who lives above me in my apartment building had a guest stop in for a few days. She is a friend of Karina's family back in Colorado and was traveling around South America when she stumbled into some medical problems. Friends of the family are always great, you've never met them but you need to treat them like a long-lost relative even though you'll probably never see them again.

In any case, I stopped by to show Karina my new horrible haircut (my spanish DEFINITELY needs to improve) and get a woman's opinion about the extent of the damage. After I was assured by Karina that it wasn't too bad, she got a phone call and took it in another room. This left me alone with the familial friend, Mandee.

I found out that Mandee was a fellow international educator although not in the same vein as Karina and I are in. She teaches ESL to Bosnians in a language institute. We got to talking about how she got into the field since most people from Colorado don't rush off to Bosnia to teach ESL. It eventually came out that she had lived overseas as a kid (just like me) and chose her profession based on the idea of continuing to travel. Being the curious person I am, I asked her where she had lived and was surprised that we had a common school from our history - Jakarta Embassy School.

International educators will recognize that this is not the current name of the school in Jakarta currently - but it was the name of it back in the 1970s. I asked her when she was there and it turns out that we attended the same school at the same time! How amazingly weird! I've found this woman who went to the same school as I did 30 years ago.

I had goosebumps at this moment and couldn't resist asking her a question that men are never supposed to ask women, "How old are you?" When she replied that she and I were the same age, I was absolutely floored. At that moment we both realized that we were classmates from Kindergarden and 1st grade!!! Now THAT's something I never would have expected to happen on the average Tuesday night.

What a small world indeed...