Following our McTasty Friday evening meal, we regrouped with our regulation “team meeting.” FYI, Joe felt the need to hold several team meetings throughout our trip to ensure our compliance with his program and agenda, and to be fair, his safety (probably ours as well). (Not to ramble, but being the gawker that I am, I did completely stumble into some gypsies who were begging in the Lviv town square. Said individuals were triangulating around me and were ready to “frisk” me, as it were, until Joe and Gene steered me away. For the record, the Mom gypsy was holding a baby to play the sympathy card, but HA, I noticed that the “baby” was a doll, since there were definitely real doll feet sticking out of the blanket.) At any rate, for Saturday morning, we were allowed some free time and given the opportunity to make it all the way to his apartment without a leash or a baby harness on us. The new apartment that we moved into after we returned from Lviv was a fair piece (as my beloved sister-in-law Glenda might say–or she might not) from Joe’s place and required some elementary navigation skills. (Go out the door, turn left, turn left, turn left, turn left, and then walk straight, past the Handicapped supply store, where a male mannequin was wearing crutches, a head bandage, a sling, a wrapped stomach binding, and the coup de grace, a diaper.) We thought we had it down pat until we reached our first left and realized that there were two lefts in the same space–one leading underground and one just left. Reaching that fork, we took the road “more traveled by” (apologies to R. Frost) and made it to Joe’s place. Then, we were even more proud of ourselves for sneaking past the outside security guide (who looks like a Ukrainian Tommy Lee Jones) and getting behind the outside gates due to several attractive, stiletto-clad residents of his apartment who were going out to get groceries, or Botox, or whatever. The next hurdle was entering Joe’s security code in order to get into the building itself. After several tries (you have to reach upside down and feel for the numbers to press. It would have been more helpful to have a McGyver mirror, but oh well. We then said hello to Otis again and took the ten floors to Joe’s place and rang the doorbell. Success. Oh, our boy was so proud of his elderly, helpless parents! We stayed for awhile, had lunch, I blogged, Gene slept, Joe watched soccer. That evening, we went out to dinner with Olya, Joe’s friend, originally from Belarus. Olya was also a Muskie fellow several years ago and got her degree in Public Policy from the Monterey School for International Studies in California. It was great to meet her and to see how much democracy-building work is going on in the Eastern European countries both by Olya, Joe, and other young people like them. We went home, packed, and prepared for Ukrainian Viktor the Driver to pick us up. We piled into the car for the airport, and Viktor told us…:”Good-Bye Ukraine, Hello America!” Indeed.
