1999 was a year to find ourselves. We survived, barely, our first Kyiv winter. John made his first trip to Chornobyl, the project that brought us here. Many of these diaries were sent to his Mom back in Ukiah California so she and her friends could keep track of our whereabouts. It was a wonderful use of modern communication but we lost this audience shortly after we retuned to Eastern Europe after Christmas vacation. That was truly one of the hardest parts of living thousands of miles from home.