Eleana Lazarus and Solomon Francis were reunited through UMUC.

With UMUC classrooms on every continent and in dozens of countries, sometimes it's easy to forget how small the world really is. Eleana Lazarus and Solomon Francis got a pleasant reminder not long ago.

Eleana and Solomon were born in the small town of Vellore, India. Their mothers met in 1951 as classmates in a nursing program there, graduated, and later worked together, teaching in the nursing college.

Over the years, the families kept in periodic touch, even as Eleana's family moved to California and Solomon's family moved to New York. Eleana and Solomon, however, met only once when they were very young, when their mothers got together in California.

Recently, though, when Eleana told her mother that she would be going to Songtan, Korea, to teach psychology for UMUC-Asia, she got a big surprise. Solomon, it turned out, was already living in Songtan with his wife and son -- and teaching mathematics for UMUC-Asia.

"Well, you can imagine how happy the news made our moms!" Eleana wrote. "They immediately talked about the possibility of traveling together to visit us during the holidays and cooking Indian food for their poor 'deprived' children."