MoldovAnn

… this whole social networking “thing”. I reconnected with a loooonnnggg lost friend today, after, lord, 15 years? Ever since I’ve had the tiniest inkling of how to use the internet, I’ve spent at least one or two afternoons a year searching for him. We lost track sometime in college, I think. I honestly don’t remember our last conversation, I have a vague memory of the last time I saw him in Columbus. But he’s always stayed close in my heart, someone I think about, wonder about. Someone I miss and want to talk to.

I smiled all the way home tonight after getting a reply to a fishing message I sent on Facebook. It’s Tony! Wow. I really thought I’d never find him again.

Ukrainians have a much stronger and more serious sense of the word “friend” than your average Americans do. Most Ukrainians will say they have 2, maybe 3, “friends”; everyone else is an “acquaintance”. We Americans, on the other hand, will call someone we met 30 seconds ago a “friend”. Not a bad thing, don’t get me wrong. But the only way I could think to describe Tony to Igor was that he is one of my 3-4 “Ukrainian-type friends”.

Oh, the intertubes can be so wonderful sometimes!