It’s a small world after all!

Today I was assigned these twins in my department, and I was looking forward to it since their mom was around a lot and I like the parent contact stuff (well, most of the time). Anyhow, I’d watched the twins yesterday, too, and I had thought she looked familiar, but at the end of the day I concluded that she reminded me of an old schoolmate from junior high and that it just must have been the red hair. We had a good talk yesterday because I asked her if she knew or had been told how to read the twins’ charts that we noted hourly observations on. She hadn’t known how to read them, so I went through the entire thing with her and explained everything. So today when I was reassigned the twins I knew Mom a little bit and was looking forward to the shift. After lunch as I was doing the obs, she came over to me and asked me in a very confused way, “Where are you from?” When I said the US, she said that a nurse had told her I was from Denmark. I told her I lived there and she mentioned she had lived there, too. I asked her where and she said Odense… So as I’m staring at her it’s all starting to come back to me and my eyes are getting wider and wider. I told her I was there in 1997-98 and she said, “Me, too!” Sure enough, it’s this girl who was on exchange in Denmark from Sydney in 1997! The Aussies arrived in January and left again around Christmas, which meant that we overlapped only by a half year, but she and I would go with all the other exchangees to Britta’s house every Friday afternoon for pop, cake and candy. We’d all meet there and hang out, “playing” her piano, listening to music or cleaning her fish bowl. She went to a different school than me, but I totally remember who she is and she remembers me. It’s totally crazy because this summer I had been thinking I needed to dig out all the contact cards I got from people in Odense and see if I couldn’t somehow catch up with some of them while I was down here. But I never got around to it, and I figured everybody will have moved by now anyways. She caught me up on some of the other Sydneysiders and I caught her up on some of the other Americans. I was just standing there, looking at her over her prem baby and thinking how bizarre it was to be meeting her this way after 11 years! Who would EVER have thought that 11 years later I’d be caring for her twin boys in the NICU in Sydney??? We talked for the rest of my shift and then I had to elave, but she is, like everyone else, on Facebook, so I’m going to find her there and try to keep in touch, and maybe even reconnect with the other Australians. Madness I tell you, madness!

So after this, my day was going great… It was Bettina’s last night with us, as she is leaving to travel north tomorrow, so all was good. We watched a movie, ate way too many cookies and drank tea and pop all evening. (Almost all evening, I did have some work to do, but we’ll come back to that.) After the movie, I was totally exhausted and looking forward to hitting the sack. I got changed, turned out the light and got in bed. Not two minutes later I could hear this plastic rustling. It totally caught my attention, but I thought, ah, don’t overreact, it’s nothing. Two minutes later I hear it again and I’m not in any doubt. I jump out of bed, and brandishing my can of cockroach spray turn on the light to find this disgusting, massive cockroach on my dresser going over my things. Now, I might have been asking for it because I left a bag of dried mango on the dresser and I should have put it away, but still. So when it went into my pencil house (a little bag for pencils, pens and erasers), I attacked. I don’t know if I poisoned him or just plain old drowned him, but either way, he didn’t move. I got a girl to take it outside and dump it all out so I wouldn’t have to, but even so, I couldn’t relax in my room anymore. ARGH! I hate cockroaches… They are disgusting insects. Someone told me that they could survive an atomic bomb – it wouldn’t surprise me. All I know is that this is one thing I’m looking forward to about going back to Denmark – at least we don’t have any cockroaches!