Coincidences

Sometimes the immensity of this world boggles my mind. I know but a little part of this world, and yet I have seen so much already in my lifetime. If you look at a map, though, these things that I have seen cannot to begin to fill the entirety of this globe. All I have seen our little dots within little counties that our part of a bigger state. Within these cities, I know but a part and will never be able to truly know any place. (Even Lindstrom can sometimes surprise me with a new street or park that I have never seen) At the same time, the world is quite small, and the coincidences that occur in said small world are just as mind boggling.
For example, at the hostel in Budapest we met a guy whose parents lived in a small town in Maine. It just so happened that the grandparents of Liza, one of the other students in the CHP program and now my good friend, also live in that small town, and the two families were old friends. Furthermore, Liza was in the same swimming class with the guy’s little sister. How we all could end up at the same hotel in Budapest is beyond me.
Yesterday, another strange coincidence occurred. Although Robby knew that he was going to come to Prague for a couple of days, his brother did not have similar plans. Pete didn’t even know when Robby was going to be in Prague. But yesterday, when we were walking home from dinner, we ran into Pete. Neither knew the other was in Prague, and we were as far from Pete’s hostel as possible. But somehow, fate stepped in and we were in the same back street at the exact time. If we would have spent an extra minute on Charles’ Bridge or eating dinner, we would have never seen him. Somehow, we ran into each other on the streets of Prague. Is stuff like this pure chance? Or does our shared background have something to do with where we are walking and at what time or what we visit. Or is there some sort of outside force that creates these coincidences? With such a gigantic world, how can we run into people that we know?