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1967,Setting out from NYC, World Campus Afloat

My sister Patti in the first photo. The second is me, with friends, setting off from New York on the S.S. Ryndam.

Coincidence?

For my junior year in college, I set out upon a trip around the world on the S.S. Ryndam. I was enrolled in World Campus Afloat––a semester abroad.  It was no disappointment to me that prior to setting off, they closed the Suez Canal, so instead we had to sail around the coast of Africa and through the Cape of Good Cope. Our African stops turned out to be my favorite and would eventually lead to other visits and even a year and a half stay, but that is not the story I’m telling today. My story happened in Beijing, where Indira Ghandi threw a reception where Ravi Shankar played for us.  Amazing.  Afterwards, different University students took us to a number of activities around the city and my friend and I wound up at a party in an apartment where I ended up sitting on the sofa next to a student who had just returned from a visit to the States. Where was I from in the states? he asked, and I answered that I’d grown up in South Dakota but that previous to World Campus Afloat, I’d attended two years at the University of Wyoming. He found this interesting as what a coincidence…when in the states, he had visited a friend in Newhall, Wyoming. Had I ever been there, he asked? Yes, my roommate my Freshman year had been from there, I answered, and also, my sister’s roommate and good friend was from there. And what was my sister’s name, he asked? Patti Dykstra, I said, and his eyes grew huge as he seized both of my hands in his and revealed that he had talked to her for hours at a party he’d gone to at her friend’s house in Newhall just four days before.  It had been over four months since I’d seen my sister, but he’d seen her four days before at a party half way around the world. What are the chances? True story.

for SOCS the prompt is  “coincidence.”