Coincidence?

Today was a good day.

For the first time in weeks, I'd finished all my assignments for the week - yesterday. No rush, no stress, nothing.

I woke up this morning feeling like I just wanted to get out of the house.

"Will you take me to the mall today?", I asked my sleeping husband beside me.

"Hmm?", he wondered.

"I just want to get my hair trimmed, and get Mikaela's and my pictures taken today." So the plan was set.

Aaron dropped Mikaela and I off at the mall, before heading to school for the afternoon. The wait wasn't too long at MC, which was so nice. My last haircut was some 10 months ago, so I was ready to get rid of some split ends and uneven hair growth. Mikaela sat very still in her stroller the entire time I was in the chair. She only started wailing when the hairstylist started blow-drying my hair. I don't use a hairdryer at home, because the noise bothers her.

After my haircut, we walked over to Sears Portraits for our photo session, which I'd belatedly arranged just before I walked into the Hair salon. Heh. It was a slow afternoon for them, so they were extremely accommodating. I wanted to have my picture with Mikaela taken in our qipaos, before we both outgrew our dresses. I haven't worn mine since our wedding, and well . . . let's just say it's getting more difficult to put on. ;)

Mikaela wasn't very cooperative - as in, she wanted to be everywhere but still, so after a couple of decent shots, I decided to give up.

As we were waiting for our photographer to edit our pictures, another lady walked into the store. She looked Japanese/Korean to me, and I just smiled politely at her. She watched Mikaela running around with an amused expression on her face, before pointing to her qipao, and asking me "Where did you get that?"

"Oh, some friends from Singapore sent it to her", I absentmindedly responded. I was still trying to keep Mikaela from going too crazy and getting into things she shouldn't get into.

"Oh!" The lady responded. "I'm from Singapore!"

"Are you?!?"

So it turns out, that E. met her husband while they were both doing their PhDs together at IU, and after they graduated, she's continued to do some research at the school while he became a professor at the school. She had a 9 week old baby girl with her, and after their photo-session, we got to walk around the mall and learn more about each other.

This is the first time I've met another Singaporean lady here in B-town, and vice versa for her.

It's incredibly amazing how quickly we hit off, and had so much in common back in our home country. Goodness, we practically grew up in the same neighborhood (her family lives less than 2 mi. from my family), and went to elementary schools adjacent to each other. Even though she's four years older than me, at some point we must have played together in the same field between our schools. How random is that? And even here in B-town, she lives less than 2 mi. away from us. Too funny.

Reminiscing about the good ole' home country is always great, so yeah . . . today was a good day. :)

. . . . . . .

To think that we both went to Sears Portraits on a whim (me, because I didn't have homework . . . and she, because she took a day off work) and met . . . and could relate to each other just like that.

It was a good day. :)


~ Mrs. Arcfide