Small World

I had two small world experiences recently, so I think that warrants a blog entry.

First, I went out to dinner with my third cousin*. I had found out that she was in Washington, DC (through facebook), and she lives really close to where I go to school. So she and her boyfriend and Jeff and I went out for 10 cent wings. It was very cool to catch up - I don't know when I last saw her. Actually, a lot of the catching up was sort of reminding each other of who our siblings are and what they're up to. Her boyfriend is a substitute teacher (he actually has a degree in education and wants to be a social studies teacher, but they got to DC just after the school year started, so there aren't any openings). She is working at a interpreter office - she schedules free-lance interpreters to cover events. The sound like they're having a really good time. They haven't seen much of the east coast, so Jeff and I have invited them to come to New York or Boston with us. I think it'd be really fun to go on a mini-road trip with them. I really like the idea of knowing your extended family and staying in touch with people. I've been trying to collect information on my family tree, so we'll see where that goes.

The second small world experience is that two of the students from Vigyan Ashram** (a school in Pabal, India - a village where I stayed two years ago) got gmail addresses, and now they are on gmail chat a lot of the time. India is 9.5 hours different from D.C. - that works out almost perfectly so that when I'm up in the morning checking my email before class, they are online before going to bed. When I get home from classes and am online doing homework, they're just waking up, eating breakfast and chatting online. It's been really fun to be in touch with them. It reminds me of all the really interesting similarities and differences between here and there - and makes me miss India a lot. One day we were chatting about holidays, and they were asking if the Ganesh Festival and Diwali are celebrated here. I told them about Halloween and tried to explain what that holiday is about. Mahesh got in touch with my brother, who works at a computer company, because he's interested in Linux. It's really fun to be in touch with people on the other side of the world and keep up to date on what's going on.

*We have the same great-great grandparents, our great-grandmothers were sisters, our grandmothers were cousins, our mothers second cousins (I think that's what it's called), which makes us third cousins.)

**Vigyan Ashram Website: http://www.vigyanashram.com/