It’s a small, small town…

The night that we arrived in Kunming, we got off the plane around 4 or 5am and were met by one of our Korean friends who had come to that airport to meet us. He had organised a driver to come and take us and our many bags to our temporary accommodation.

As we were loading our gear into the back of the van, another passenger from the plane asked the driver if he could drop him off on the way. Negotiations ensued, the place he wanted to go was reasonably on the way to our destination, so we all packed into the van.

It turned out that the guy was a Chinese student who had been studying Korean in Korea. The conversation in the van drifted between Chinese and Korean, so I understood about 50% of it.

Fast-forward a month. Last week we were having lunch with a student and her cousin that we had met at one of the universities here. As we were finishing our meal and getting ready to leave, who should walk in and sit down at the table next to us? The same guy who jumped in our van at the airport! Of all the tables in all the restaurants in all the places in this city, what were the chances that he would come in and sit next to us??

This time we were a bit more awake and had our feet under us, so we got his phone number. We also got an invitiation to his birthday party that took place last night. We met at a restaurant that is apparently famous in this city and has a very long history (also a giant pig statue out front). Inside we enjoyed a great meal with about 8 of his other friends. It was a very multi-lingual party. Most of the guests were majoring in a foreign language at University, some of them Korean, some Japanese, and some Thai – also, all of them could speak at least a little bit of English. Cathryn and I had a great time and are planning on inviting some students over to our place some time to continue building relationships with them.