Cuentito #4 - It is a mundo pequeño

Hola a todos. I thought I'd take this break between classes and use it to tell you a crazy, crazy story. Maybe you had to be there...but you can imagine how this blew my mind.

Last week, a bunch of the guys from my residencia and program went to a bar off Las Ramblas (a main artery street here) (yes, the drinking age is like 15 here) (and yes, Mom and Dad, I drink responsibly at a pace akin to the tortoise in the "tortoise and the hare" story) (the hares in this case being all other American students in this program besides Megan... but slow and steady wins the race!). Ok, I´ll stop with the parentheses. This is all necessary build-up for a very short story.

OK, so we go to this Bar - L`Ovella Negra - and it´s in this random alley sidestreet (but well lit and safe) off Las Ramblas. I was having a cheap Spanish beer with 8 of us around a table, and the bar was filled with Spaniards...on a Monday night, of course. I look up and notice a white guy that looks American based on the way he was wearing goofy running shoes and an Eddie Bauer-looking sweater. Then I realized, I recognize that anti-fashionista attire, and I recognize that white man!

Of all places and of all people, there was Bill Fanning - my professor in Marketing at Berkeley all of last semester. He taught a class of 25 of us, so it was small and I feel like I actually got to know him as a professor (most of my professors a Berkeley give lectures for 100 people and don´t really bother fraternizing with students). I couldn´t believe it. I had to do like 10 seconds of double-takes because my brain couldn´t handle the two worlds colliding. I walked up to him and said hi, and of course he was pretty shocked too. Once the surprise wore off, he said he was there with his son who had studied abroad in Barcelona and now lives there (oh, that´s an interesting idea?). Luckily, I got a good grade in the class so it wasn´t awkward talking to the guy that just put me through a hard final a month ago. He was heading back to Berkeley the next day because classes started on Wednesday.

So, moral of the story is don´t get embarrassingly drunk in a bar, even 15,000 miles from school, because you might run into your professor! (I, of course, was successfully sober and am referring to a hypothetical situation).

What a small world.