Reunited with Singer

Remember we taught English in Korea? Well, we’ve maintained Christmas card friendships with a couple of Canadian teachers and one of them lives in Missouri. The other day I wrote to see where exactly she is, and here she is in a suburb of St. Louis!

This gal never met an American she liked until us, and we always joked that we learned more about Americans from her, than by being one! She had all kinds of labels for us, and shared endless opinions of Canucks that we didn’t even know we had. But the most lucid memory I have of us in Korea, was the time we went to a Karaoke bar together. We were in a tiny, private room and she chose the new version of “I Will Always Love You.” I’ve always preferred the raw Dolly Parton version, but when she started to belt out those lyrics, we were all overcome. Singer had a talent that none of us knew about. Whitney Houston, move over. This Canadian can sing!

Years later, we got word that she was marrying a Yankee. It was all we could do to buckle over with laughter! Such irony! And now she even lives in the States. It’s too too much. I say this in jest because I feel incredibly lucky that we were able to hang out on such short notice with only one day here.

We met downtown at the beautifully renovated Union Station for dinner and I was so happy she’d brought her husband and darling little girl (who Doodle insisted on calling ‘Baby’). As she so accurately put it, being together in the same place after all these years, validates that our Korea experience was in fact real. Neither of us had positive experiences there, although we have good memories and many lessons learned. Strange, the turns our lives take, huh? I hear it’s really the people we meet along the way that matter most.