The world isn't tiny. It's big. And full of people. Eight billion and counting! And they're everywhere!
We all (well, I) try to carve out my own space. We all have totally unique stories. No two people have been to all the same places and seen all the same things.
When I was a kid, we lived in Sri Lanka. For a while, I went to a school in neighboring India. It's an international school, so many people all over the world have attended there.
And last night, I met one of them!
I belong to a book club in town, and they choose award-winning books, or classic books that are infrequently read, books from lists of "must read" books. The last book was about the Sri Lankan civil war that was happening - or peaked, or started? - while I lived there. So I couldn't possibly skip out.
One member of our group is Indian. She doesn't live in town, so she's not at every meeting. During the course of discussing the book, my connection to Sri Lanka and southern India came out. After the meeting, as we were all leaving, she pulled me aside and asked, "That wasn't Kodaikanal, was it?"
Yes. The school I attended for a few years in the 1980s was Kodaikanal International School.
The school she attended for a few years in the mid 1990s was Kodaikanal International School.
Somehow, we two former students of a K-12 school in southern India both happened to land up in central Vietnam 30-40 years later. In this big wide world full of people, what are the odds? And not just that we are both here, but that we both opted to join this particular book club!
Yup, it's a small world. It's funny how we run into people we wouldn't think we would.
ReplyDeleteIn China, it wasn't meeting people we connected with as much as it was just seeing so many doppelgangers for people we knew!
DeleteWhen I was a pastor in San Juan, Puerto Rico, one Sunday morning one of my old professors from my university in Illinois came walking in the front door of the church.
ReplyDeleteWe both looked at each other and said, "What are YOU doing here?"
Hah! *LOL* (irl)
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