It Truly is a Small World!

While sitting in the classroom waiting for the first class to begin, one of the other students and I struck up a conversation. We were talking about the difficulties that come with attending seminary and such things. As we talked, we happened onto my transient lifestyle.

It turns out that we were actually at Shindand Air Base in Afghanistan at the same time for about two months! This could be part of the reason that he looked familiar, though I tend to have that be the case even when there is no connection.

I wonder how many other connections I will come across in my time here.

International Flight from Hawler (Erbil/Arbil), Kurdistan, Iraq!

It seems that the Royal Jordanian EBL (Erbil) - AMM (Amman) - ORD (Chicago) is a very popular route. Not only were a number of passengers on both legs, but even the crew was the same! It was an odd feeling having the same flight attendant for two different flights, one just a few hours after the other.

The truly interesting leg of the flight was the one from Amman to Chicago. At first, I was sitting next to what turned out to be a soldier from Yemen on his first trip to American. And why was he going? He was in an instructors' course at the Defense Language Institute (DLI)! This connection with my former employer was unexpected at best.

In front of me was a woman from Israel, to my right was a family from Palestine. Just after we lifted off, the Palestinian man had me switch with his wife who was sitting in the seat in front of him as he wished to sit next to her. At that time, the people I was sitting next to were from Jordan. At first it was two teenage girls, but their mother and younger brother were seated closer to the front and kept visiting, and eventually changing seats.

The young boy, Jordan let us call him, was just under four years old and just recently graduated from pre-school. As such, he was overly energetic and was finding it difficult to sit still. I became his playmate for a portion of the trip. He had two toys: a tiger and a lion. We would use them to fight, he found it necessary to use the wet-wipes we received in order to give them a bath. Playing was fun, but it was not always easy to understand him. He was bilingual but was obviously more comfortable in Arabic as this is was the language he would use with me most often.

During play time, the mother was sitting next to him talking with the person at the end of the row. They soon turned their attention to me, and it turned out that the woman at the end was in a management position with the Modern Montessori School in Amman! She told me that I should send her my cv as they are looking for teachers for the fall! This means that I have to decide if I want to take a job in Jordan, Iraq or stay in the US. I could try to get a job in Denver and take residential classes in order to get my GPA back up and see what comes from it... Oh the decisions!