Suzy Sunflower, a true super creative PCV, at her English Club's Halloween party. What we won't do for our projects!
It’s hard getting coordinated when you don’t have a schedule or plan or itinerary, but it’s “normal’no” in Ukraine; we accept it. Sometimes things work out, sometimes not, like when I tried to coordinate a visit with my PCV friend Suzanne on my trip to western Ukraine. We had emailed, phoned, skyped and were looking forward to seeing each other again.
I said I'd call when I got to Lviv, but I didn't know our schedule. No problem, she said, I don't know mine either.
Suzanne, a beautiful California woman in retirement, was the first person I met when we started our PC orientation on April 1, 2009, in Philadelphia. We were raw recruits, novices, unsure of what we were doing. We’ve kept in touch ever since, although we are posted in opposite ends of the country. I’m in the far east, and she is in the far west, in a small town an hour north of Lviv, Dobrotvir, where she works with the library, on an HIV/Aids project, and various other projects. It’s been challenging but she’s done great things, a real trooper.
We never did connect. We learned later that we had been only a few blocks from each other in the center of Lviv. She had been running around to get supplies for a project; the people she was with had scattered (gone shopping, she said); she was at a café waiting for the women to return when I called. She had no idea what was going on.
Well, frankly, neither did I. We had just had a great meeting of the Women of Ukraine at the medical university, heard Ospan on the bandoora, a treasured gift, and were going on a Lviv walking tour with Yaroslava from the University. I’ll call again, I told Suzanne.
We kept trying. Calls came and went. Time came and went. We couldn’t make it happen. “Oh well, we’ll connect another time,” we both agreed, as I was running with Olga, Tonya, Julia and Stefa to the Lviv theater, and Suzanne was running with her colleagues to catch a marshruka home.
“I’m looking forward to the day when I can understand what’s happening around me again,” she signed off at the end of one of our many phone calls. “Hey we’ve gotten really good at operating in the dark,” I replied. We laughed and knew we had connected afterall, just not in person!
Suzanne, a beautiful California woman in retirement, was the first person I met when we started our PC orientation on April 1, 2009, in Philadelphia. We were raw recruits, novices, unsure of what we were doing. We’ve kept in touch ever since, although we are posted in opposite ends of the country. I’m in the far east, and she is in the far west, in a small town an hour north of Lviv, Dobrotvir, where she works with the library, on an HIV/Aids project, and various other projects. It’s been challenging but she’s done great things, a real trooper.
We never did connect. We learned later that we had been only a few blocks from each other in the center of Lviv. She had been running around to get supplies for a project; the people she was with had scattered (gone shopping, she said); she was at a café waiting for the women to return when I called. She had no idea what was going on.
Well, frankly, neither did I. We had just had a great meeting of the Women of Ukraine at the medical university, heard Ospan on the bandoora, a treasured gift, and were going on a Lviv walking tour with Yaroslava from the University. I’ll call again, I told Suzanne.
We kept trying. Calls came and went. Time came and went. We couldn’t make it happen. “Oh well, we’ll connect another time,” we both agreed, as I was running with Olga, Tonya, Julia and Stefa to the Lviv theater, and Suzanne was running with her colleagues to catch a marshruka home.
“I’m looking forward to the day when I can understand what’s happening around me again,” she signed off at the end of one of our many phone calls. “Hey we’ve gotten really good at operating in the dark,” I replied. We laughed and knew we had connected afterall, just not in person!
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