small world afterall!

sorry its been so long since i have written. hopefully people still check here periodically. i don't have a ton to say. we are eagerly awaiting our new baby to come. only a few more weeks. my best friend chris golwitzer just had his little girl about a month ago and our friends here just had their little girl on wednesday. we are next in line. it is funny how over the summer it felt like we had forever to go because chris and our friends here had to have theirs first. but now they have both taken their turns and its ours next.

school is keeping us quite busy. it is hard to believe that we have already had three months of classes. november and december are crazy months for me with lots of performances and report cards to write, at the same time as a baby is due to arrive. thankfully we have a week off next week for Idul Fitri, which is an important muslim holiday, kind of like christmas, but not really. we are going to head down to jogyakarta, which is where the big earthquake happened at the end of last year. just be happy we aren't going to sulawesi right now. we are going to stay in the city for few days and then spend a couple of days at a coffee plantation outside the city. it will be our last trip as just leah and i.

i just thought i would share a story of serendipity...

last saturday i participated in habitat for humanity and we went to a village outside of jakarta in the middle of rice fields and palm trees. i went with a group of students and teachers to help move bricks and roof tiles, and do whatever other odd jobs there were to do. when i was walking up to the site a girl stopped me as asked if i used to live in minneapolis. i thought it was really weird but off course i replied yes. she then told me that she used to work at the same tutoring center that leah and i worked at. i don't know how she recognized me because i think we only worked together a couple of times. leah knew her a little better than i did. she had just moved down to jakarta in august to teach at the big international school here. i was glad that she recognized me because it was really nice to talk to her when we finally got a chance to sit down for lunch. long story short, we met up with her at a couple of her friends for dinner that night and it was quite fun to talk about minneapolis with her. for anyone who has lived in that city, i think has to have a certain affinity for it. especially the specially grocery stores.

another strange occurence was that one of the friends that came along with our friend was introducing herself, and i felt like i was having dejavous. i told her this was weird but i felt like i had met her before as well. it was like i had heard all of the words she had just said when she said her name and where she used to live. anyway, it stuck me. i didn't really meet her but last year when we went to manilla, philippines for a conference i went to a jane goodall, roots and shoots seminar. this same girl was there and she sat behind me two rows. somehow i remembered her. no idea how though. normally i can't remember what i was planning to do 10 minutes before.

if that wasn't enough for a strange day, we went to this dinner with a bunch of friends from our school. now follow this... leah and i invited the girl from minneapolis. our friend cindy invited two of her friends. the girl that we invited, invited two of her friends, who later on invited one other girl that they new. are you following? the girl that was invited by the invited friends of the minneapolis girl that we invited, knew one of the girls that cindy invited from texas about 5 years ago. how crazy is that?

i guess all of this silliness just goes to show that the world really is a small place.

enjoy!