Meet Anastasia and hear more about an encounter that's one in a million. https://morganfielder.wixsite.com/website-8
You'll never believe this story. Learn what you can do to support the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.
a small world afterall : Anastasia
[00:00:00] Track 1: Warning. This episode contains graphic and disturbing reports. Please if there are children around. To Turn off the podcast
[00:00:09] anastasia: I did not see Airaid scrum.
My husband was making dinner at home and I was like, oh, let me watch the news. And I accidentally turned the news five minutes after the first explosion. And after that, probably for about five days, it was just one big lore. I like barely remember anything. I had to call my family and tell them the divorce started.
I had to wake them up. Like it was the most soul crushing day of my life.
[00:00:35] Track 2: Oh, welcome to our journey. It show where we have intimate discussions. With three-dimensional people fleeing Ukraine now in Ramstein, Germany. My name is Morgan fielder, former us Naval officer, mother, and refugee host. Each week, we'll talk about the actual journey from Ukraine and what comes next.
You'll get a glimpse of hope, connection and horror. If you're listening and you want to help. Sign up for our mailing list, where we share how you can make a real difference.
[00:01:14] Track 1: This is Anastasia Thomas. She's an episode one. The soul of the war, talking with Eric. Eric's a refugee from ADESA. With in-laws left and melatonin. Under Russian occupation. We'll walk with him and his wife and son on their actual journey from Odessa to Ramstein in episode three. Angels appear.
[00:01:38] Eric: I was born in Iran and then in 2009, I came to Ukraine for studying. And in 2013, I finished the study. I came back home, but, um, during that years I met my future wife. So, uh, in 2016 I came back and I get married. And, uh, 2017, my son was burned.
[00:01:58] Track 1: But today we're going to dive into the one in a million. Heck one in 10 million chances of an encounter. That proves yet again. It's a small world after all. But first more about Anastasia.
[00:02:14] anastasia: My education is in linguistics and I did well, technically it was five years because I lived in China for a year in between. My university years. Um, but yes, I have a bachelor degree in Chinese and Mandarin.
[00:02:30] Track 1: If you haven't listened to episode one, go back and learn who Anastasia is.
She's your ideal millennial. She and her husband live in Austin, Texas. They have acute Bernabeu and she loves interior design.
She was born and educated in Ukraine.
And her entire family is located in or about Kiev.
[00:02:50] anastasia: Like for me,
my dark family is in Ukraine. Right. And I been, obviously that tension has been heating before the war. And a lot of my friends in the states were like, Hey, are you okay? Is your family okay?
What do you think is going to happen? Everybody wanted to know my take because of Ukrainian. And they wanted by analysts and analysis of the situation. Right. They were like, do you think they're going to innovate? What do you think is gonna happen? It's like, I don't know. Everybody's fine. So far there's nothing happening.
Right? So like, yes, my family is okay if that's your question, but,
I don't know. And I just, like Eric said, I know. Nobody believed, like there were people who were like, okay, we don't think it's going to happen, but they're going to prepare emergency backpacks. We going to have our paperwork or passwords ready just in case something does happen if we have to flee.
Right. Because there were rumors. People were like, what if
[00:03:51] Track 1: And what if clearly happened? So she hopped on a plane to Germany to volunteer her language skills in English, Russian, and Ukrainian. She's clearly not able to help directly in Ukraine where most of her family has living near Kiev. Her father-in-law is actually activated by the national guard currently.
Each day she's been helping the humanitarian crisis. That's unfolding. With over 10 million Ukrainians displaced by this war.
Her focus has been on the children and mothers. Who've blindly taken trains from Moldova Buddha. Pashed Poland. Wherever. To be taken in by volunteer host families into their extra bedrooms and granny flats.
Where I live in Germany in the far west. Almost near the French border. Our state of Rheinland faults alone. Has over 3000 Ukrainian children trying to enroll in school. Anastasia has helped many of these mothers who only speak Russian. Or Ukrainian. By going to meet German principles and helping submit the mountains of asylum paperwork, translations and more.
And most importantly, helping host families and refugee families connect to each other.
[00:05:15] anastasia: And I mean, I've met probably over a hundred people,
my time here, Germany. So I never know if this is somebody I know from long time ago or is it somebody I met on my first day here?
[00:05:28] Morgan: And all of a sudden there are, I don't know, 80 people at my house with one hour notice because we just wanted to have some pizza and get people together.
People who are here hosting refugees, and then people, families that are fleeing the war. And it was most beautiful Sunday afternoon. And you know, again, like you I'm like meeting all these people, is it Russian? Is it Ukrainian? Is it German? Is it English?
[00:05:54] Eric: We entered the house and so many new faces of course, but there are some faces in our legacy that you guess that you have seen this face somewhere, but you're not sure because you don't know who is you pregnant with American and who is German even that's what's happened right now, all the time in the streets for me also.
I saw her face and I thought, oh,
it's it looks very familiar, but I was not sure. So I, I was going to ask in English because who knows, maybe she's an American. So I asked her about that. Um, Where are you from? And she said from Ukraine, I said, okay, good sign. It's continual. And uh, I said, your firm's, uh, it looks familiar.
And, um, really something like that. Do we know each other or sometimes a year I go, and then I understood that perhaps, no, this is not, this is the wrong person. So I said, okay, let's try it again. And I said, did you study in a GIF national linguistic university?
And she said, yes. And then I remembered that. Yes, yes. That's exactly her that's also, I said, uh, did you study Chinese?
[00:07:12] anastasia: But yeah, it was crazy. It was like, what? Eight years ago? 10 years ago.
It was long time ago
we, we shared the building with international students, like my faculty. So it would just hang out like on coffee breaks, eating everything. So it would like meet a lot of them. And this is insane. Like what are the chances?
[00:07:33] Track 2: It's a small world after all.
[00:07:37] Morgan: Anastasia's here from Texas for a month just volunteering.
And then Eric's there with his family. And I don't know, as a, such an incredible story.
[00:07:46] Eric: Yeah, but it's not the first time I should have, because we went to get in there, stood guard, station transition, and we understood that actually she used to live in the house near our house in Kia. Yeah. That's because we are in the seven, a house in the street and she used to live in seven.
[00:08:10] Track 2: So against all odds to former college classmates. One living in Texas, one in Odessa. Reunite at a refugee pizza party in Germany. So uplifting. Let's hear what two classmates discuss on their reunion After this
[00:08:39] anastasia: And what was his name?
[00:08:40] Eric: Denise.
[00:08:41] anastasia: A lot of it. I'm sure you've seen him because we would always hang out with him on breaks.
He was living in and we can find him.
[00:08:55] Eric: Oh, my God
[00:08:57] anastasia: was him on the
[00:08:58] Eric: 12th.
[00:09:00] Track 2: On Saturday, April 2nd. Ukrainian forces retook the commuter town of near Kiev. Are the Russians retreating or reorganizing. Who knows. All we do now. Is that upon liberation of boots. The mayor reports, they dug a mass grave for over 280 civilians.
Some as young as 14. And many shot in the back of the head. Execution style.
[00:09:33] Eric: Uh, what about the other students who are studying Chinese?
Do, are
[00:09:39] anastasia: you in, but I do remember.
Yes. I have a lot of friends still from,
You know, from university, but,
do you remember there was a, you may have not remembered, but he was always like smoking now. Um, a teacher, Chinese teacher, and he was kind of younger. I would always like smoked by the building.
And what was his name?
[00:09:59] Eric: Denise.
[00:09:59] anastasia: A lot of it. I'm sure you've seen him because we would always hang out with him on breaks.
He was living in and we can find him.
[00:10:13] Eric: Oh, my God
[00:10:16] anastasia: was him on the
[00:10:16] Eric: 12th. I have one, one, uh,
classmates from Kiev and her grandmother is in butcher right now. I yesterday her name is actually actually, I asked her, do you have any connection with the grandma? She said no connection at all. She doesn't have any electricity, any fuel I'm short, any food right now.
So yeah, which unfortunately is not. Yeah.
[00:10:42] anastasia: And my hope is that just, you know, that he just scanned, he does just doesn't have. Um, connection, but hopefully he's okay. He just can like, let everybody know, you know, that's my hope.
[00:10:56] Eric: Yeah. We have the same situation. My in-laws are from under occupation right now.
So sometimes they have connections. Sometimes they don't, whenever something happens, they just knocked down the connection. So people cannot just everybody what's happening
[00:11:14] anastasia: here. Yeah. This is horrible. I know the Dean of faculty of Oriental studies. Um, his house got destroyed. I think it was like in European.
Maybe he, his house is completely destroyed, but he's okay. And his family was okay, but no
[00:11:30] Eric: house yesterday. Uh, I have a friend, her name is Anya and she studied in. My God, instead of Chanco university and she and her husband actually worked in China for six years,
they got
money and so on, so they could buy a small flat outside the gear and it tiers.
10 minutes is it was a very beautiful flat.
We visited two years ago. My wife. Yesterday. I called her. I said, she's not answering. She just rejecting answered what happened. She said our flat destroyed that's was, you know, that was the result of fires, working, getting money, working on that also because
it's, I don't know how to describe it, you know, in one chapter of your life is destroyed in one second. I don't know how to say it.
[00:12:34] anastasia: Yeah, this is it's it's it's it's an unimaginable unimaginable. There's
yeah. There's going to be a long way to recovery and it's going to take. A lot of effort
It's it's insane. Like my, my grandma, she was born, um, right after second world war and I just talked to her yesterday and she was just devastated. She was like a gambling. This is happening. I was born right after the war.
We barely survived. There was famine. We would, you know, gather stuff on the field, like grass and weeds and make soups out of it just to survive. My mom was just pulled everybody through and I get like, I never thought this would happen again. I never thought they would live through those in my lifetime.
And it just soul crushing to hear the stories of older generation who has been through hell already, who has had very difficult childhood. The memories is still there. You can to raise that stuff and they, it old triggers back. And it, I, I can't do it. Imagine how devastating that must be. And people who actually fought, fought the second world war, and now they have to be here again.
I just heard the news. There was a man who was a veteran of second world war, and he was a huge advocate for, uh, veterans and victims of that war. And he was in like two concentration camps and he was making sure that the world doesn't forget what happened. And he was killed in this war. How is this even fair?
I have been saying this to, uh, all my friends, everybody who's always checking in and asking, what can you do, right? Or I wish there was something I could do. Cause it feels like if you are not in the danger zone and you're not in the immediate imminent danger or you don't know anybody who is.
You are far away and you just gonna sit and watch in the backseat and that's not true. And I want to reiterate that every single person, regardless of where you live, you can do something. It can be as simple as sharing the news, keeping it in the news and constantly talking about this because if the world forgets, if it just cycles out of the news, it's not going to stop people from dying in Ukraine.
there's anything that you can do, like contact with local authorities there, it's about closing the sky or about supplying bathrooms or hosting refugees.
Look it up.
show. The support shows show the world that the world is United and we are want front fighting this horrible dictator.
and you can join the world effort in supporting the refugees support, supply humanitarian aid, medical aid, armed forces.
If you, for whatever reason, don't feel comfortable, donating to armed forces, donate to the medical part of it, donate to support the refugees.
if it feels like, oh, I just brought a little bit of food. It's all going to global agenda anything. Yes. It's not that you're going to make somebody's life better and you're going to make somebody's day better. And that, that matters. And that matters. Just don't think you, you, there's nothing you can do if you afar.
[00:16:14] Morgan: All right. Thanks for listening. I'm your host Morgan fielder. And if you find any value in this podcast, I want to ask a huge favor. Please take out your phone, hit subscribe and share this episode directly with a friend. Right now there are 10 million displaced Ukrainians. By sharing these stories.
Perhaps we can help others find refuge in these terrible times.
Better yet. Maybe some Russian mothers will hear these stories. And build a movement to take down Putin. We can dream big together.
if you want to help the refugees settling near Ramstein Germany, sign up for the mailing list where we push out great info. Again, Thanks for listening.