It's a Small World After All

Things happen from time to time living overseas that take me by surprise, reminding me how global my life has become. Life gets in a bit of a rut, I feel comfortable here in Bogota, it became home and I forget there are any differences between Bogota, Colombia and Grand Rapids, Michigan. And then boom, I had two experiences while in Bangkok that remind me how vastly different and global my life has become.

I applied for a job in Moscow before our trip and as luck would have it they were doing interviews the week we were traveling. So I found myself one evening sitting in the hall of a hotel in Bangkok, because that is where the best internet reception was, looking at the resume and application I had filled out in Bogota, speaking to a room full of people in Moscow. Somewhere in the conversation time zones, jet lag, cultures and countries faded and we were just people having a phone conversation. I didn't get the job, but my mind still spins around wondering how simply life can be carried on while jumping around the globe.

While hiking the Inca trail in Peru last fall we met a couple from Canada. They were backpacking South America and we said “Come stay with us.”, and they did. As we were talking we realized we would all be in Bangkok at the same time. Go figure! So we found ourselves seated around a table, enjoying a fantastic Thai meal on a continent that none of us are from which is a different continent than we met on.

Paths start start crossing. On our way home from Bangkok we stopped in Paris where we spent some time with wonderful friends whom my husband first met in Grand Rapids, visited years ago in Mali and now live in France.

This is a precious gift about this life that I hold onto. The world starts shrinking and the people we love become more accessible.