Hi all. No real news about Irina, unfortunately. The messages I'd sent were eventually read, by someone, about four weeks later. The next two that I've sent, in the last two weeks or so, have not been delivered. I could speculate all sorts of stuff, good and bad, about this, but it's a Schrodinger's Cat sort of conundrum. I thank you guys again for the assistance, I'm sure it helped her at the time, but her fate may never be known
In other news, about another young Ukrainian lady I know, based out of Kharkov, well let me start from the beginning: in the Fall of 2018 I met a gorgeous girl named Daria, who was in San Jose, Bay Area (San Francisco/Silicon Valley) for work training. Really interesting stuff, to do with the German company she worked for at the time. I heard her speaking Ukrainian into her phone, while sitting near her at a bar, and started up a conversation. Ukrainian and Russian languages are quite different - it's like English and German languages, all these completely foreign words in a sentence, with one word that pops out occasionally, "oh, hey, I know what that word means." My understanding of Russian was just enough to showcase my ignorance of her native language. Of course, she speaks Russian, as well as German and English... Anyway, long story short, we got to spend a couple afternoons together and really hit it off, ended up corresponding for a couple months. Things didn't work out for us, and I'm sad to say that because she was truly one-of-a-kind.
I just heard from Daria this morning, after sending her an email asking how she's doing, is she safe, etc. In the last two months she's ferried some pregnant Ukrainian girls from Kharkov - under fire at one point - to Germany. She has recently returned to Kharkov, however, because her brother was killed in the fighting, so she's gone back to be with her mother. I'm not sure what their plan is now, I've asked her in a reply email so we'll just have to see.
How odd the threads of this existence are, weaving through geography, space, time, minds, and hearts.
Miss you, Daria, and I hope you'll stay safe