It's a small world after all!

Before you begin reading, I want you to sing or hum to yourself the song “It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small small world”. With that song stuck in your mind for the rest of the day….

Heather stopped by my office to chat the other day. We started with the normal questions asked amongst State Department employees….Where was your last post, where do you come from originally. When I said the Seattle area of Washington, she lit up exclaiming her favorite place to live is in Washington. Where’s that? A little place called Arlington!!!!! For those of you who may not know, we lived there for many years, and our two sons, Erik and Randy still live there! Heather lived there for a little over 2 years. Her kids went to Pioneer Elementary school! Very surprising!

But something amazing occurred the very next day. Are you still thinking about the song?? We have a new staff member in my office. As we sat chatting before work, he mentioned that his wife was from Nicaragua. As most of you may know, Don and I, along with our two youngest kids, Steve and Randy, spent 6 months in Nicaragua. Since I was familiar with some of the country, I asked where she was from, to which he replied the Caribbean Coast. I immediately guessed the big town of Bluefields, which is a jumping off point for getting to a lot of little villages. But she wasn’t from there, she was from Pearl Lagoon, the exact little village that we had lived in!!!! Back then it was a small place of about 300 people! Anthony and his family still visit there regularly because his wife’s family is still there. But they have since built a road from the village to the capital Managua, so the little village has grown rapidly in population, drugs, crime and pollution. Welcome to “progress”!

The girl in red is Heather from Arlington. The one with the scarf is Omaira from Pearl Lagoon. Christen, next to Omaira, and Cassie and baby David make up the rest of the group. We all went shopping at the medina here in Rabat together. Although Don had been there before, it was my first time. Unlike the market we visited last week, the medina mainly sold non-food items, especially leather, wood products and carpets. We came home with a few treasures including a little stool that looks a lot like a camel saddle.