Day Two: I was planning on saving this title for something special. But after three weeks of traveling, I’ve said this more times than I can remember. It’s crazy how many people know the people and places that you love.
Today, I had one of the craziest “It’s a small world” moments. Hayley, one of the Kiwis in my radio journalism class, asked where I was from in the U.S. and I said “outside of Washington, D.C.” Then she mentioned she lived briefly in Virginia. I stopped in my tracks and asked where. It turns out she spent a few years as a young child living in my hometown! We exchanged one of those smiles that said “What are the chances?!”
If you think about it, those chances are pretty small. I happened to be studying abroad in a county literally on the other side of the world. She happened to not only be at my university, but also one of the five people that showed up to class today. (The rest of our class was doing journalism bootcamp and they won’t attend class until next week.)
It turns out Hayley’s dad is in the New Zealand Air Force. Basically, she sounds like every one of my best friends from home. I come from an area with a ton of military families, and it just so happens that my best friends’ dads were also in the Air Force. Like their dads, Hayley’s dad was in the Air Force for 25 years. Unlike my friends from home, though, she didn’t spend her entire life moving around.
The one place she moved to was Virginia. Did I mention it’s a small world?