Where Are They Now?

Craig Cowles writes: ". . . school finished today, just in time for my birthday; kind of a mixed blessing; I now qualify for some of the discount cards provided to younger senior citizens. . . Interesting summer planned. I'm returning to (Romania) . . . Back to the company I advised last summer. Their business is thriving (I coached on a business plan last year.) Instead of looking to raise money like they were trying to do last summer they are now looking for a safe place to park it temporarily until they can evaluate whether or not they want to buy out one of their customers--a little forward integration as we refer to it in the business trade. They also want me to help evaluate a cockeyed scheme of the Romanian government to loan them a bundle at low interest rates in exchange for guaranteed hiring of about sixty people. Sounds vaguely like a communist proposal to me--you know, the purpose of the business is to employ people, making a profit is only a secondary thing. "The Stupnikovs, our (Ussuriisk) mom, dad, sis and bro are coming to Amerika for the month of Avgust. We plan to haul them all over the northeast. Cape Cod, the freedom trail in Boston (selected parts so they don't get bored), the mountains in Vermont, tentatively to Pittsburgh (and Niagara Falls if they want like every foreign tourist in the East seems to for some unknown reason), then down to Baltimore and D.C. "Renee's job evaporates at the end of June due to a government bonding obscurity so she is going to work on the (Vermont) house with me in July, travel a bit, practice her Russky yizic and entertain for the month of August before hitting the campaign trail again. . ." Amy Dickerson: "Nothing to report but too much going on! Final week of classes/2 projects, finals next two weeks plus 20-pg. project I haven't started....then off to Bangladesh for 3 week bus. consulting trip for a class (go figure, back to the crazy place!) and then immediately off to Corvallis OR for rest of summer working in marketing at Hewlett Packard. . . Michelle Desikan saw K-tom and K-steve in K-Oregon and then relocated east; says, "I have heard that there have been reports of Michelle sightings in DC and I am writing to confirm that it is true. I am sorry for not getting in touch with everyone sooner, but I have been trying to figure out my life, and it is slowly coming along. (That makes one of us. --Ed.) I finally feel a bit more settled here in DC. I came here for some interviews and still was wavering if to stay here. . or go overseas. . . or grad school??? The options were making me crazy. Anyway, I finally found something that I liked and am now working at Peace Corps in the Minority Recruitment Division. Things are going well here. . . and best of all I just got a phone!!!! Life will be so much easier now. I know I survived without it for two years, but here it's hard to survive without one." Angela Frizzo is back! She writes: "Yes, I am home. Surprise, surprise, huh? You probably didn't think it was possible to get me out of that country, I suppose. I am home a little earlier than I had planned, and now I am going through those awful, awful stages of readjustment. So, what am I doing? I have no idea. Thinking about Seattle, maybe San Diego, maybe Washington, maybe Portland, maybe Kansas, maybe Chicago, maybe Minneapolis, maybe Boston. I really haven't got a clue. . . Melinda Leonard writes from Uzbhekistan, referring to the Kosovo war: "I am finding it very hard to be an American over here right now - - I can't even imagine what it has been like for you (Sharon and John, in the Balkans). Quite something. Life over here trundles along like a gimpy elephant, and psychopath that I am, I am happy as a clam. (Psychopathic clams are not happy to have gimpy elephants around. --Ed.) I went out to Samarkand this weekend with a friend on my first non-business trip and fell in love all over again. What a remarkable city it is. Too bad y'all can't get over here for a visit. . . -- Melinda the Tattooed Tashkent Lady." John and Sharon spent two months in the Balkans while Sharon began a Peace Corps TEFL training session in Macedonia, planning for the next group of vols. The PC was evacuated after one month when Clinton started waving his phallic war stick at Milosevic, who waved his Big Stick back, so McDirlam spent a month in a hotel in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. A fine town, but the PC involvement ended on a somewhat depressed note and the evacuation turned into a COS conference for both groups that were in Macedonia, and the next group never came. Quite a personal setback for some of the folks. Next? McDirlam plans to go back to Vladivostok for the next PST, June-October! If everyone gets their visas, that is. Dave Borror (remember him in West Virginia?) will be the PST director for Western Russia. He says why don't they do both at the same time, and they could all go to Athens, W.Va., to wait out the visa problems. Aaaurrghhh! Steve Schue has landed at Portland General Electric Co. and says he'll stick around for a while to see if business opportunities get better in Russia. Mahty McGuane is writing a book -- his Peace Corps memoirs. Hey, it worked for Paul Theroux! See "My Secret History" . . .