Top 5: “It’s A Small World” Moments

One of the highlights of teaching (and living abroad and traveling in general) is that it enables me to meet tons of people. And once you start meeting people “small world” moments are bound to happen. My top five:

1. My first year teaching in Sarajevo I flew home for Christmas out of Budapest. So I took a long bus ride from Sarajevo to Zagreb, then train ride from Zagreb to Budapest, and finally a metro ride out to the Budapest airport. Walking through the corridor an hour before my flight, sipping my favorite carbonated diet beverage, I heard “Hi Katie!” and saw a student from Sarajevo, who was waiting on a connection coming back from a business trip.

2. At a party here a few weeks ago, I met someone hailing from a town perhaps 50 miles from my own hometown who knew not only of my town, but of my high school and the (excellent, I must say) reputation of its football team.

3. After I left Sarajevo, my former boss asked me to email a potential teacher with some comments on the city and life there, which I did and thought nothing more of it. A few months later, when I was about to return on a visit, she told me that that teacher thought he had met me before – in a hostel in Romania over a year ago. He remembered talking to someone who was going to teach in Sarajevo and that was rare enough that when he went to Sarajevo, he remembered. I met him and sure enough: I’d met him over a year ago.

4. During my brief stay in Slovenia following a longer trip to India, housemates in two separate accommodations had been to India – the last one and I had even overlapped a few months (though not actually met), meaning we were both in India at the same time.

5. My most recent “small world” incident: before relocating to my current city, I’d gotten a wealth of information from a classmate from my CELTA course who had worked here. We’d kept in touch very loosely but had only actually met up once since the course. I got an sms from him yesterday saying he was back in town to take care of some business – he’d gotten my number from the teacher who’d replaced him – who I’d met very briefly for some TEFL networking. I was quite happy to meet up with him and some of his friends and co-workers.