Surprise, surprise

Sometimes everyday-life becomes extraordinary. Like today.

I had struggled my way 3/4 through another Wednesday, which is the only day of the week when I have to get up early, because I’ve got my first lecture at 9am.

I had one tutorial left, which would make up the eighth hour I spent at uni in a single day (continuously). I was so tired, and just wanted to go home and get started on my English assignment which is due in on Friday. Not to mention that I was starving. Anyway (I get easily sidetracked), there I was, in my Media 101 tutorial, suffering silently and begging for it to end. I must admit I wasn’t being very social with the two other people in my group (we were supposed to analyse the music video for Michael Jackson’s ‘Billy Jean’), Alex and Natasha, but eventually we started talking. After some time talking about how we didn’t understand what we were doing, Natasha asked me where I’m from, and I told her that I come from Norway. She wanted to know if I spoke Swedish, and I said ‘No, I speak Norwegian, but I understand Swedish.’ She then informed me that she’d lived in Sweden for two and a half years and only returned to NZ just over a year ago. When she asked me where in Norway I’m from I used the same point of reference that I always use, which is Bergen (I ask the questioner: ‘Have you heard about a city called Bergen? You do? Yeah, well, I come from a small island just south of Bergen.’). Incidentally, this girl had heard about Bergen, and when I mentioned it, she tilted her head, and asked me in a doubtful voice if I happen to know a girl called Anette Loland (Løland). Instantly, I knew that the name was familiar, and after two seconds of twisting my brain I knew where I’d heard it before: She was in a newspaper back home before I went on my exchange to NZ in 2007, and the article was about how terrible EF (the organisation we both travelled with) had been at looking after her while she was on her exchange to NZ. When I read the interview way back in 2006 I got a bit scared by the news, so I contacted her to get more details about what had gone wrong, and was even invited to talk to her face-to-face (which I didn’t). So when I’d remembered all this, I told Natasha that we’re not exactly friends, but that I know who Anette Løland is, and I’ve been in contact with her. We were both quite astounded at this; that we would meet by chance, and actually have a mutual acquaintance from Norway!

Natasha’s mother works with STS, another exchange organisation, and apparently they had had Anette stay with them for a while after she’d been neglected by EF and needed a new place to stay, so they were like good friends and everything! We couldn’t stop laughing at the ludicrous fact that this was happening; it felt surreal and, like Natasha put it, ‘It was a stab in the dark’ when she’d asked me the question in the first place, because, I mean, what are the chances of something like that actually happening?

I definitely think we can call that kind of discovery an ice-breaker. We had something in common, so when the tutorial ended, we walked up the road together and conversated like old friends.

Thanks, Anette, I owe you one.