Last night I sat and talked to my CHU-mate for almost two hours straight.  We talked about everything.  He now knows about my med school plans, that my parents farm, and that both of my grandparents still living have had cancer.  I know that he lives in the Philippines with his wife on a rice farm, that this is his last or next to last year in country, that when he gets home he is going to increase his operation to include buying and selling rice to mills, and that from seeding to removing rice seedlings to replant is about 28 days.  I also know that his brother has pancreatic cancer.  The 5-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer in Caucasian men is less than 5%.  I really wish I hadn't had to lie to him when he asked me how bad pancreatic cancer was. 

The point is, this has happened to me several times since I have been over here, and twice in the last week in a half.  I will have been talking to someone, sometimes for hours, and realize that I never gave them my name and they never gave me theirs.  Sometimes, we even part ways without ever finding out the other's name.  These conversations are sometimes your garden-variety bus stop bench, grocery store line chats, but more often are lengthy discourses on love, life, home, or dreams.

I don't know what it is that makes perfect strangers open up to each other in a way that would take months in the States.  Does this type of work draw those people that naturally open up to complete strangers?  Or, is it the common bond shared by being 8000 miles from home in a place where most often relationships are quickly formed and even quicker broken?  I think that it is human nature to want to reach out and connect with those around us, even if we know that those connections will soon be over.  I have had some of the longest discussions I've ever had with people I've only known for five minutes.

Oh, and my CHU-mate?  I finally found out his name, right before he left for another base this morning, but for the life of me I can't remember it.  I guess it really doesn't matter.....