the tales of the tb man

so i'm sure y'all are awaiting updates of my travels throughout the greek isles and the stops leading up to my arrival here in rome (we arrived yesterday). but i have an interesting story to tell.
we've been island hopping for the past week and a half, enjoying the beautiful landscapes despite the dampening rain. that has been quite a tragedy. but not the point. once we finished with our travels throughout the isles, we took an overnight cruise on a ship to southern italy. however, once we arrived in itlay, we were out of connection with the world. this is becuase for three nights, both of the hotels we stayed at had 1. no internet connection and 2. no phone lines availible to us 3. in the middle of nowhere. they did have some nice views/ close proximity to ruins, but we felt a bit removed from society. we had to pay to have air turned on, our tvs didn't work, and so on. okay so enough complaining. i know, i'm in europe for goodness sake.
so anyway, point being that when we arrived here in rome yesterday, we were desparate for both laundry and contact with loved ones. becca and i hit the ground running and were first to locate the nearest laundry facility and get it going. when we finally got back, we walked into carina and katie's room to be in the middle of a story that confused me.
she was talking about a man who had tuberculosis that traveled on like 7 flights or something. it didn't really make sense to me at first why she was so animated about the story or why this mattered so much. i don't know if you have heard the news about the atlanta man who flew to athens, greece for his wedding and had a severe/rare case of tb, but it turns out that this same man flew on the same flight from paris to athens that carina and jamie had been on. jamie and i have been roommates the whole trip and carina, jamie, me, becca, sarah, and katie have been hanging out the entire trip.
so basically, this all broke out on our last night in greece and school officials, parents, etc. have been trying to get in contact with us because they knew they had been on that flight with him. we find all this out last night and they would have to use their first free day in rome to get tests in the hospital. fun, huh?
but this is not the end of the coincidental story. as we gathered more information about the circumstances surrounding the events of tb man, how he was from atlanta, how he just got married in athens, we make a very sudden and ironic connection. a random and rather unimportant conversation with an older atlanta man who shared a breakfast buffet with us at our hotel (which pretty much only housed our group of 30 and maybe 3 additional rooms) popped out of our blur of memories from the past 3 weeks. we had finished our week in athens, had enjoyed our stay in mykonos, and were wrapping up our stay in santorini when this man told us he too was from atlanta and he and his wife and the other couple had come to greece for their son's wedding which was that past weekend. the wedding was in athens, greece. so basically, not only did jamie and carina fly on the same airplane as tb man, but we ate breakfast with his parents a week and a half later! its just too strange to comprehend.
as for the testing today, their chest xray scans came up negative and they are still awaiting the tb test prick in the arm which they'll go back for on wednesday. so i think we're safe. we'll see...if you hear of an outbreak of tb amongst a group of georgia students, think of me.