quelquefois le monde est trop petit

Sometimes the world is too small...

This weekend was free weekend for all the museums and cultural hotspots in, I believe, all of France. They believe that everyone should have access to culture here - a cool concept!

So I went with my roomates Gael and Denis to the Archaeological museum, and after finally finding an infinitesimally small parking spot for Gael's Europe-sized Ford Fiesta (read: small - Ford? Yea, I didn't think that was possible either), we find a note on the museum door that said "Closed. Why? It just is." Bummer. So we walked across the street to the Grenoble museum. No biggie.

After oogling over some works and amusing ourselves with others of the contemporary genre, Denis stumbled upon a friend he knew from his time in Paris. Nicolas, this friend, looked at me and said in French-English fusion, "Hey, you're from San Diego." I looked at him and fumbled for words in some as-of-yet unchosen language, and finally he answered what I think I asked... He knew my friend Aurelien (who is really more of a friend of my friend Aude's, one of my San Diego French friends), who is a grad student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. I did not recognize him at all at first, but as we all kept on talking I started to piece it all together. He had worked with Aurelien for 5 months a couple of years ago, and I vaguely remember running into Aurelien on campus with a friend of his from the lab. Timing is about right, because I started working at SIO about 2 years ago. His face looked also vaguely familiar, so that must've been it. Nicolas had remembered me as one of Aurelien's American friends who speaks a bit of French.

How's that for random? The world of Scripps Institution of Oceanography is incredibly small - and gets smaller by the day... or country?