It really is a small world (after all).

I've written before about how it is a small world (after all), and for those of us American students studying Russian, that is absolutely the truth.  Before I left on this little adventure to Kazan a few people asked me if I knew anyone on my program.  To this question I replied, "No.  But I'm sure that I'll realize that I do once I get there," having great faith in the strength of the Russian-speaking community.  Sure enough, as I waited in the hotel lobby in Washington DC to meet my group, I was joyfully accosted by Jackie, a girl with whom I studied in St. Petersburg.  Later at orientation, I started talking to another participant in the program Max, who I realized after a few minutes' conversation I had actually met in St. Petersburg because we have mutual friends and randomly ended up spending an evening together at a cafe called Pirogi drinking beer from tea kettles and engaging in a lively political debate with the neighboring table of Russian engineering students.  After arriving in Kazan I met up with my language partner, Aigul, who immediately asked me if I knew Keith, another kid with whom I studied in St. Pete, because her friend had been his tutor when he was in Kazan, and they had spent time hanging out.  I could keep this list of connections and 'who knows who' extending on and on, and it would include a guy who studies at the Naval Academy with someone from my high school, a friend from Rhodes returning to Kazan to conduct Ph.D. research, a Fulbright Scholar in Kazan with whom I share other mutual friends, etc, etc.  I'll end however with the most bizarre connection of all.  I walked into class yesterday, and there stood Jill, an American professor who taught me Russian at Bryn Mawr College for a summer three years ago.  As we stood catching up, neither of us could believe that fate, as the Russians would say, brought us together again on her two day visit to Kazan.  I share all these random (or not so random) connections to say that no matter where I am in the world or how far away from home I think I am, I'm never really that far from people I know.  Life is constantly coming full-circle.  Paths fork and come back together again.  The webs of our lives are wonderfully interwoven.  And there is something very comforting about that reality.