Chance Meeting in Marrakech

I am a geologist and I love to travel, so I often visit exotic locales for both work and pleasure. I have often fantasized about encountering someone I know on a trip like this, and then it actually happened! This past April I had the opportunity to visit Morocco as a teaching assistant for a field class. As our group was assembling after arriving in the Marrakech airport, a young woman walking by said "Hey! Were you in Dabney House?" I happened to be wearing a sweatshirt with the insignia of my (small) university residency house. Startled, I glanced at her and, somewhat in shock, we both recognized each other from our undergraduate days. We hadn't been close friends and therefore had not seen or talked to each other since I graduated, almost nine years prior to our chance meeting! She was in Morocco for vacation, completely unrelated to my expedition. Our (very small) university was in Southern California and we were both Americans; neither of us had any particular connection to Morocco. The sweatshirt in question also contributed to another similar coincidence: about a year after graduation, I wore it upon arrival in the Pittsburgh, PA airport and was similarly approached by a current resident of that house. In that case I did not know her, but we had both just arrived in Pittsburgh to visit our respective boyfriends, who were both students at Carnegie Mellon University! Ever since these incidents, whenever I wear the sweatshirt I wonder if it will facilitate a coincidental meeting. In both cases it wouldn't have happened without the identifying sweatshirt; even in the case where I knew the other person we only recognized each other after looking more closely than we ordinarily would have at a passerby. I have also been tempted to calculate the chances of such an event, but perhaps Dr. Spiegelhalter has that covered!