I was recently reminiscing about my trip last spring break to California. My friend and I headed west to visit a mutual friend and spent the week in Santa Barbara and LA. And I never realized the wild characters we found there. There was a snake charmer, fire dancer, iguana owner, and Johnny Depp look-a-like, to name a few. You can find some interesting people if you just look around.
Last June, while listening to a street musician in Florence sing and play his guitar in a great open square, my family and I started talking with three young men from Australia. I don't really remember how it happened - they were having a funny conversation behind us as we sat on the steps on that summer evening, and somehow my mother involved herself in their talk (as she often does with strangers, in her outgoing way). And so we laughed with them for a while. Apparently two of them had met the third while traveling around Europe, and they had all been traveling together for the past few weeks. After some time we decided to take my grandmother home, and thought how nice it had been to meet them.
After returning home, we decided we wanted to have more fun in Florence's nightlife, and so we headed out again. And somehow we ran into the three Australians. Since it seemed like fate, we went and had drinks with them. They were hilarious, and my sister and I ended up staying out with them long after my parents decided to go home. We wandered around Florence, and then they walked us home. We sat around talking for a while in the square below our apartment and planking for photos.
It's chance occurrences like this that make meeting new people so exciting. Although my sister and I are friends with the boys on Facebook, I doubt I'll ever talk to or see them again. It seems sad, but also wonderful that we got to spend a night in Florence with them. Life can be unexpected that way.
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