A few weeks ago I saw an old friend on Facebook and contacted him. I asked him what he was doing these days and told him that I was living in Madrid doing the exchange student thing. This friend was Felipe Castro, who did a Rotary Exchange with Cottage Grove High School 3-4 years ago. He happened to be doing a two-year exchange from a Chilean university to a French one. And, during his spring break was planning a trip to Spain. So we said we would meet up in Madrid.
On Wednesday I met up with him and his group of travelers (other students at the French university from Italia, Spain and Russia) in front of the Prado Museum. This time, unlike the last time I saw him, we spoke in Spanish. Before he was learning English and I the native speaker. Now, it is reverse. It’s nice to talk with some who really understands an exchange, having done one himself. It was cool to catch up on the last four years and to have someone else who knew anything about Cottage Grove and its high school. He sends his regards to all those back in Oregon and many of you Rotarians who helped him, and me, with the exchange program.
The coincidence that he happened to be living in France, and visiting Spain, just a few weeks after I talked with him for the first time in all those years, was quite extraordinary. It reminds me of a time when my two uncles, (my mom’s brother and dad’s brother) ran into each other randomly on a beach in Thailand. While maybe this is not as haphazard, it still took some chance.
In other news, I have three weeks left of school until I finish on May 8th. Afterwards I’ll have a little bit over a month until I return to Oregon.
Posted on April 17th, 2009 | filed under Rotary Youth Exchange, Spain | Trackback |
I absolutely love those kinds of “coincidences”! Please give my regards to Felipe - he was one of my dancers in the R&B show the year he was at CGHS!
I have had, in my life, 2 of those kinds of major coincidences. One was when I was traveling in Egypt. I was walking into a cafe very close to the Sphinx, near Cairo’s pyramids, when I ran into someone (BTW named Philipe!) that I had been friends with in Japan when I had taught English there 2 years earlier. And when we were in Bali, we were sitting in a little restaurant and I overheard 2 American women talking with each other. One of them had a rather unusual name which I recognized as the name of a friend of my friend Risa. So I asked the woman if she knew Risa - indeed it was her friend. And, in addition, she was talking with another woman who was a farmer who had a CSA in Michigan, and eventually Tal realized that they had meet at a CSA conference a year or so earlier1 So if these coincidences have any genetic components, I predict you’ll have some more in your life!
Love, Mom