Our three-week stay in Russia is nearly over. During much of this time we have stayed with a group of people who were all friends in Grozny and had to leave very suddenly because of the Chechen conflict. They are scattered across Russia depending on where they found relatives or opportunities to start new lives.
After observing how they had created this amazing network of acquaintances, Cindy asked how they had found each other again. The response was classmates.com. I cannot say I have ever paid attention to this site, but it makes some sense. This service predates Facebook and offers a way for people to connect. Somehow, the site was identified and became a way to reorganize.
This reminds me a bit of our need to flee Grand Forks in the middle of the night during the flood of 1997. We had difficulty reconnecting and the Internet was much more primitive at that time. I remember using some makeshift site that was established to identify your location and to search for others. Of course, we were able to return within a few months and our Russian friends could not go back.
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