coteinmoldova.blogspot.com

Home and Finished

2011-08-30T23:34:00.002+03:00

Figured since I kept this blog up over my two years in Moldova that I would tell everybody I'm home, safe, and my Peace Corps service is completed. Living in Moldova for two years I tried to keep this blog updated in some fashion whether it be through photos, stories, and general life as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Being a volunteer in Moldova was a challenge to say the least. I met a lot of wonderful people, and grew a lot as an individual. Hopefully you enjoyed an entry or two, and for future volunteers in Moldova I hope that this was of some help.

Soviet Medals

2011-06-08T13:30:00.004+03:00

I was walking around with Mandy and we came across these Soviet medals at a sort of flea market. I don't know if they are worth anything, but since they are cheap and kind of cool we bought a few. I mostly picked the most Soviet-looking ones I could (Lenin and the hammer and sickle). Also notice there is one here that says "USA" and then some Russian that I don't understand. There is also a five-year anniversary pin for Moldova's independence. These pins are everywhere and I think I might even buy a few more since they are so cheap and kind of awesome.

Exactly One Month Left

2011-06-08T13:19:00.003+03:00

So today I have one month left. I also think that today marks the exact anneversary of two years in Moldova. Pretty exciting and pretty cool.

With one month left there are very few things left on my work plate. Specifically at Evrica, we have to wrap-up our outreach project. This is a small project which aimed at increasing awareness of our center to the public, as well as specifically targeting street children themselves. We have created business cards for employees to carry, maps of where our center is, hand outs, brochures, billboards, and directions and informational handouts that are targeted specifically towards children that will hopefully entice them towards our center, and ideally a better life. So here it looks like we got a lot of printing and distributing in the works.

Also in work we have a few things left for The Village Project. We have a lot of simple wrap-up and conference left where we will be presenting how ours individually went, and what suggestions we have for it if it were to continue in Moldova. At the conference I believe that the Ministry of Education will be attending. This may be a step in a direction where their civic education project may become more participative.

So basically that plus a bunch of forms and medical exams and then I'll be cleared to leave. Good stuff. I plan on doing a few visits to other villages in Moldova, and taking a few pictures before I leave on a 10-day trip and then arrive home.

With this remaining time I will try to post random things or pictures to this blog during my final days here in Moldova.

Close Of Service (COS) a few pictures

2011-05-29T19:42:00.002+03:00

Less than two months: what I miss

2011-05-23T21:54:00.007+03:00

Summer is here. It's hot out. I won't dare complain about the weather after our six-month-long-winter. I stayed pretty tough throughout the first part of winter, but the last month and a half was pretty soul-crushing. Every day was short and gray and it was tough to stay positive in any aspect of my day here. I made it. Summer is here and Moldova is green. Soon enough I will be back in America. I leave on July 8th, and have all of my ducks in a row. Getting the next two months planned has made me think of America more than I have in the past. I think things that are awesome in America I have blocked out here so I don't miss things too much. Here are a few things I miss.

1. Parks. Good parks are great, and I think I took them for granted in America. Especially in Seattle where there are parks next to the water everywhere. I plan on taking advantage of this when I get back.

2. Books. Here in the PC library there are a lot of books, but it is nice to know what you want and then go and get it rather than settle for something just to read it.

3. Food. My God, there is great food in America: variety. I can't wait to hit up a Chiplote, Gyros, Thai food, and BBQ with my friends and family.

4. The movie theatre. There are theatres here but they play movies in Russian so I have never gone. The experience of going to the theatre in America is quite American and I miss it. Huge popcorn and Whoppers.

5. Swimming. There are a few pools here, but I have only gone once in Chisinau, and once here in Balti. They were both quite nice, but there is nothing like going for a swim outside in a lake/ocean with the sun out. There are a lot of lakes in Moldova, but we are discouraged to swim in them as they are polluted and many people grow all kinds of infections that I am not trying to get.

6. Beer. America has good beer and Moldova doesn’t. No question. Microbrews are on my list for my return.

These are only a few of the things that came to mind while writing this post. Of course there are many I long for. Of course I miss my friends and family. These are just a few novelties that came to mind.

Pictures from Easter

2011-04-26T14:02:00.002+03:00

Palm Reader

2011-04-19T13:34:00.003+03:00

I was in the center of Balti today reading. A woman approached me, and asked if I wanted my palm read. I told her "No thanks." "Don't you want to know your future," she said. "No" I replied. Her, "Come on, I will do it for 10 lei." "No, have a good day." Her, "You're lonely." Me laughing, "No I'm not." Her, "Do you believe in God?" Me, "No." Her, "Why?" Me, "I don't think God exists." Her, "Give me five lei then." Me, "No, stop." Her, "You're selfish." Me, "Yes I am, that's why I've volunteered here for two years." Her, "You're going to die." Me, "We're all going to die." Her yelling and walking away saying things in Russian "!@#$%^&*()_z"

First Year In Hirbovat: understanding.

2011-04-18T21:38:00.001+03:00

I have been thinking that the first half of my service was largely defined by a stage of understanding. Understanding Moldova, what defines it, the people, the challenges, the corruption, the traditions, my role (realistically), and Moldovans opinion on life. During this time I was extracting my own definition of Moldova in an effort to understand. And after all of this coming to grips with it.

Moving to Balti (switching PC sites) I entered a different stage where hit the ground running. Or so I felt in comparison to my first year. Many ask me or think this change of sites would have been difficult. It wasn’t. I came equipped with an invaluable understanding. This allowed me to make more practical choices and I entered a stage where I thought I could be more effective.

I think I have been thinking of the first year of my service as a PCV because next weekend is Easter. And next weekend I go back to Hirbovat to visit the family that I spent almost a year with. I have not gone back since I left June 1st, 2010. I have called them and talked on Skype a few times, but my communication has been minimal. The host family is great, and I like them, but distance often leads to a lack of communication.

Easter was my favorite holiday I spent with my host family, and because of this I am fairly excited. Easter here includes standing outside of the church all night until the priest blesses your basket of food with holy water. Candles illuminate these baskets. After this ceremony everyone heads home and eats the food. Similar to Catholic’s “lent” Eastern Orthodox has a 40 day tradition where they cannot eat any foods that are from animals. Basically vegan. After Easter they are free to eat whatever they would like as they celebrate Christ rising.

I look forward to the weekend, the company, and seeing the village that has taught me most I know of Moldova during my first year in this country.

Cooking lately.

2011-04-11T17:04:00.005+03:00

I have been cooking a lot lately. This weekend I tried a few new things. These, surprisingly enough, are the result of me spending too much time on stumbleupon.com. I had checked this website out once before, but never sat down to make a good profile that includes many checked interests. I listed cooking as one, and ran across recipes. Making these my favorites I soon was inspired to bake them up. I find that cooking here has been a great way to occupy my time while living alone. I also realize that it is a benefit to living alone as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Moldova as many host families are a bit iffy on letting volunteers touch their kitchens. This especially applies to you if you are a man.

Some awesome scones.

Lemon Bars.

Garlic Potatoes.

2 years.

2011-04-11T16:57:00.005+03:00

So I leave on July 8th. It really seems unreal. In some ways yes, it did seem like time flew by, but I also think about how much I have grown, and how many different things I have done here. Adapting to a new culture, and trying to understand why Moldovans think one thing or another has been quite the challenge to put it lightly. I've learned Romanian and that was probably the easiest part. All sorts of challenges exist while being a Peace Corps Volunteer, and the majority of them tend to be mental. Or for me they have. It has built a mental toughness that I have to take time to realize I have gained when comparing the moment I came here at age 23, and then now at age 25. Growing takes time, and in my case that time has been 2 years in the Republic of Moldova.

Playground Finished

2011-04-11T16:49:00.005+03:00

Hey we finally finished our playground. Below you can find pictures of the playground, as well as the celebration.

Here is a short article on the playground.

An album of pictures from the playground celebration.

An update of sorts

2011-02-19T19:32:00.003+02:00

I spent a lot of time at home today, and it was really nice to enjoy some time by myself. I got the time to edit a lot of photos that I had not given myself time to, which has been fun. Also I have spent some time drawing today, which I have not done since last year.

A couple of weeks ago I started teaching a class at the university here in Balti. It is starting to pick up and I look forward to the discussions we will be having. The focus is American Film: Studying American History and Culture Through Film. Click the link to our blog. I keep it pretty basic. The focus is for them to get a better idea of America's history and culture while improving their English skills. The course is largely discussion based. The class has also allowed me to develop a relationship with the woman who works at American Corner (a sort of library resource center from the US Embassy). things seem to be piecing themselves together well.

At Evrica, the street children center where I work, we have spent the last couple of months planning an outreach-based project. We have so many resources available in our center, but the public and possible beneficiaries do not know we exist. We hope to get our name out to the community in order to attract more children to the services of our center. It is an interesting idea. We plan to simply advertise, but the bigger portion of the project will include local partners playing a large role. These will largely be the workers of bars and stores as they see street children begging and selling flowers more than others. Instead of asking them to leave they can provide them with information on our center, and if they are interested they can call us. They will also be given a mini training on how to approach street children most appropriately. The social assistant and psychologist will check in regularly with these community partners for information. We believe that this will lead to more children receiving the services we offer, thus alleviating the problem more aptly in our community. I am hopeful we will have success in this project. We have the interview for the project this coming Saturday, and soon after we will find out if we will receive funding.

I have not been exercising but have been eating pretty healthy. It snowed again yesterday, and so I have kept to the house. Here I tend to cook a lot more than I used to. I do feel a bit guilty for not running more often, but I hope to do so more often when it warms up.

This dude wants chocolate

2011-02-07T17:53:00.002+02:00

Boy: By me chocolate!
Me: Chocolate? Why? I don't want any.
Boy: For us to eat, why don't you want it?
Me: I don't have an appetite.
Boy: You don't have an appetite, I have an appetite!
Me: Find a job. Make money.
Boy: Nobody will accept me to work.
Me: Okay, try harder.
Boy: I will try.

I bought this kid a Snickers last week. Now he thinks I'm going to do it every time I see him. Whoops! He is pretty cool though, so maybe another time.

Soroca

2010-12-15T18:50:00.003+02:00

I went to Soroca today, a city of the north. Here there is a small chapel on the top of a hill where this panorama is taken from. Also an old fortress from the 1400s. It was cool to go here even though it was snowing and cold. I can't imagine how awesome the view would be from the top if it were a clear day. A new friend took me here, and we met his sister. They are from the area so they took me on a great walk around, and we stopped for some placinta and coffee.

BLOC APTS

2010-12-15T18:42:00.002+02:00

I really think that these old bloc apartments make for some cool pictures. They are everywhere in Balti and I tend to take a lot of photos of them. They are so weathered on the outside, and usually are not older than 20 years. Also since each person living in each apartment actually owns their apartment they tend to invest a lot in them. As you can see many have the outside of their own balcony covered, or their apartment insulated for winter, or others simply decided it would be cool to paint their own, while the others remain untouched. It can make for quite the patchwork on some apartment buildings. Another thing about these apartments is that they are more often than not amazing on the insides. Moldovans are obsessed with having everything be "frumos" (pretty) so they often have the insides of these apartments decked out and remodeled.

The winning failure

2010-12-10T17:34:00.003+02:00

So bad news on a grant that was won by a community partner and myself. We won the grant, but due to several complicated issues we were unable to implement it. We were one of six out of 60 that applied and won. This is quite the accomplishment in itself, and I am proud of this fact. Sadly we had to write an email yesterday about how we would not be able to accept the money. Below is pasted parts of the project, and what it would have done, for those interested in what it is I do here... or don't do. This is what we would have liked to have done.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF TARGET AREA
Council for Unity would like to offer support to children who have become socially vulnerable due to the migration of parents working abroad. Earnings abroad shield these children from poverty, but make them vulnerable to other risks. These children lack parental support and are more vulnerable socially and psychologically. Without guidance or communication with their parents, children may fail to develop social skills and struggle to establish healthy relationships with their peers. This often puts children at risk of making poor decisions. As some cases have shown these children are forced to deal with problems they are not capable of too early causing emotional and psychological trauma. Additionally, many parents and citizens of Balti do not recognize that these problems form when parents work abroad. Within „Liceu Teoretic Vasile Alecsandri," 35% of children from the ages 6-19 have at least one parent working abroad, 10% with of which have both parents working abroad. Moreover, it is well understood that many more parents leave to work abroad and do not register with the mayor's office – making the actual number much higher. Finally, this problem is growing. It is with these students, and this grant that Council for Unity hopes to develop better communication, psychological, and social services.

PROJECT SUMMARY
We would like to remedy the aforementioned problem through three goals: 1.) To provide the community and parents with information and resources that will promote awareness and understanding of the gravity of the problem, 2.) to improve the relationship between children and parents through communication, 3.) to help these children integrate socially through team building with others in the same situation, and to have monthly group discussion led by a psychologist.

By helping children integrate socially we can help disadvantaged children in a number of ways. Educating children actively, and giving children the skills and confidence to integrate socially, will thus cause them to make wiser decisions. If we can help children integrate socially, then we can help prevent them from turning to alcohol at a younger age, and mitigate risks of human trafficking that exist in Moldova. Educating the community is key to this success as it will reinforce our goal's and organization's success.

We plan to increase communication between children and parents abroad through paid Skype time and activities such as drawing, writing, and photography. We desire paid Skype time because often parents abroad have access to a cell phone, but not a computer. Skype can make these calls for the cheapest rate available. Activities such as drawing, writing, and photography are great because they will keep children busy with constructive, rather than destructive activities. In turn we will transmit students' work - every smile captured on film, every dried brush stroke, every verse of poetry – to their parents via post. Coordinator of Council for Unity Corina Ceban and Peace Corps Volunteer Christopher Cote will facilitate this project in collaboration with leaders within Council for Unity will plan and lead writing, photography, and art activities for children. Additionally, collaboration among other community organizations in Balti will be necessary for this project’s success. We plan to involve current students and graduates of “Ciprian Porumbescu” School of Art in Balti. “Ciprian Porumbescu” School of Art will make a minimum of two appearances to teach different art techniques. This will both help boost the success of the children’s artwork learning, as well as the project’s integrity within Balti.

Psychosocial activities we plan to utilize are team building activities as well as those in Council for Unity that lead sports activities. With these activities we seek to adapt Terre des hommes' s “MOVE” curriculum. “MOVE” seeks to “increase their [children's] self-confidence through games and sports. It is recognized that this self-confidence is essential in getting young people to integrate socially, and is also a factor in preventing exploitation and abuse.” We also plan on having group discussions with a professional psychologist to shed light on the mental effects related to these issues. Between Corina Ceban, Christopher Cote, and those trained in Council for Unity’s sport department we can accomplish these goals.

In the information section we plan on producing quarterly brochures for Balti which will include what our center offers, has accomplished, existing resources in Moldova, and articles to educate.

SPECIFIC GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
General Goal: To provide support and education to children who are vunerable due to parents working abroad.

GOAL 1: To provide and increase communication between children and parents abroad.
Objective 1: To increase communication through 60 parcels per month which would include drawings, letters, and photos sent to the parents of 60 children overseas per year.
Objective 2: To increase the direct communication between parents and children through 60 hours of Skype calls a month to 60 parents abroad for our first year.

GOAL 2: To help these children integrate socially through teambuilding activities, psychosocial activities, and psychological consultancy.
Objective 1: To solve problems by offering psychological counseling in groups once a month.
Objective 2: To hold activities once a week that educate the notion of respect, trust, responsibility, self confidence, and discipline.

GOAL 3: To raise community and parent sensibility of the seriousness and impacts that arise when children are left home alone.
Objective 1: To increase the knowledge of problems related to parents working abroad by 20% in the first 6 months. This will be done through surveying the community and parents.
Objective 2: To inform and involve the community (parents) about what we do as an organization, why we do what we do, what we have done, what we plan to do, and the resources available through 500 brochures four times a year.

Through the above set goals we believe that we can more effectively offer children information, communication, support, and confidence necessary for them to integrate into society. This is all done through active education and participation. Additionally, the information we provide will give cultural understanding and sensibility to the issues related to children when parents leave for work. We believe that this is the first step in resolving the issue and that our organization will be one of the first to address such issues first-hand. We imagine that the Small Project Fund will provide us with the financial resources necessary for one year. Beyond that we plan on seeking local funding for salaries and administrative costs when once our program is running and providing a vital service and is demonstrating results in the community. It is our vision that this program will function as long as the need exists.

MONITORING
In order to monitor our progress and evaluate success, we have established the below goals, which we think are possible within the first year of our project. We hope to use the Royal Norwegian Small Project Fund to get our program started, and while progressing and succeeding with these monitored results, search for local funders with evidence of our successes in order to be sustainable.

Within our first six months we aim to accomplish the below goals:
− Monthly: have offered a minimum of 200 Skype calls, totaling 50 hours, for 20 families.
− Weekly: have offered 3 different activities a week attended by 50 children with ages 6-19.
− Monthly: have sent 50 letters/drawings/photos to parents abroad from their children.
− Have increased communication (amount of time) between children and parents abroad by 30%.
− Have reduced the number of school absences by 10% due to our activities (among our group of children.
− Have increased this group's grades by 10%.
− Have successfully informed 600 of 1000 through distribution of brochures.

Throughout the period, we will monitor the number of participating children in activities. At the end of each month we plan on collecting data to record our month's progress. Each person involved will be assigned daily responsibilities to collect these statistics for activity attendance, letters sent, and discussions on Skype. With compiled statistics, we will analyze our progress with our above set goals. From here, we will have an enhanced ability to make any necessary adjustments for the second half of our first year.

Sushi

2010-12-10T09:44:00.002+02:00

Yeah I know, I'm in the Peace Corps and making sushi, kind of funny I suppose. With winter coming I have been cooking more, and I gave a try at sushi a couple of times. It turned out pretty good. I made a lot of it, and invited my site mate Laela over for lunch. Was a pretty nice shin dig.

And the snow fell

2010-12-05T11:05:00.004+02:00

So winter came last week. A quick snow fall hit, but it was a wet snow. A couple more hit, but were melting. This morning when I woke up I took these pictures out of my apartment window. This seemed to be a good one, but right now the sun seems to be melting the snow away from the trees. All the snow makes for quite the slippery walk, epecially when the water freezes at night. I think I mentioned this in another post last year, but the PC gave us these things called Yaktrax and they work wonders on ice. Even though Moldovans give me (and other volunteers) funny looks it is worth it. Winter has arrived and I have been hunkering down and staying cozy in my apartment. Mostly making a lot of good food while I'm home. Thus the picture of yesterdays hash browns, coffee, and toad in a hole.

2010-11-29T09:10:00.002+02:00

This is a "caruta," or horse drawn cart. A lot of people use them in Moldova. They usually use car wheels and tires on their cart as it allows for a smoother ride. In the winter they sometimes use a sled. Last winter I was lucky enough to ride around on one of those.

Some random photos

2010-11-28T23:04:00.002+02:00

Picture of Chisinau. Capital city of Moldova.

My favorite kid from our center.

Me on my birthday. The director of where I am volunteering pulling my ears 25 times for 25 years of living.

Me getting ready for a Halloween skit at our street children center.

Crows Were Everywhere

2010-11-28T22:41:00.004+02:00

There was about a week long period where every morning these crows were going nuts. I happened to have my camera with me to document it. It is really too bad that the quality is no good. But honestly as far as I could see in every direction their were crows. It was a bit apocalyptic and creepy.

My Awesome English Club

2010-11-28T21:37:00.002+02:00

Sooo many volunteers have tried to do English clubs here, with limited, to little success. I happened to get lucky. I have been doing an English class every Thursday for about three months now and enjoying if for many reasons. The 12th graders I teach are awesome. They have great personalities, and them combined with my goofiness gets things moving along well. I started by teaching different kinds of American music. Blues, folk, country, anything. These things usually led into social issues or what have you. Also we would dissect the lyrics to the best of their ability and discuss them. I'm really saving rap for a special day. For Halloween I talked about our traditions in America and so on. When I came back the next week, a few days before Halloween, they put on a full skit dressed up head-to-toe and had prepared all sorts of foods. I was really surprised and regret not having my camera with me.

Recently we have been doing more activities. In some of these photos you can see that somebody had to sit in front of the class and ask questions about what profession they have. "Do I work inside?," "Do I work with people a lot?," and so on until they guess correctly. Obviously they are not allowed to look at the chalk board. I thought this photo "a clown" was pretty funny. I guess they thought "babysitter" was a good one for me.

In the other photo you can see that I am trying to spread a little bit of American slang. I crack up when I teach Moldovans slang from America because it has been so long since I have been home, and it kind of gets me reminiscing. Bottom line though is that this English club is by far one of the coolest things I have been doing. I have made friends with a cool group of students and they actually care about learning when I step in the room. We have a good time a lot of laughs. It is one of the things I look forward to each week, and am really proud of.

Civic Education Project - "The Village"

2010-11-28T21:16:00.003+02:00

A project I helped plan for, and am currently involved in is called "The Village" It is a really interesting participative civic education project. The below is quoted text from the handbook that was put together by another volunteer. It shows some of the reasoning that we set out to do the project in Moldova.
In Moldova, civic education is obligatory for students in the 5th through 12th grades. Despite this
fact, studies done have shown that civic education that is not participative has a limited impact on
the development of democratic attitudes and behaviors. Alongside bookwork, students must be given
opportunities to work together and be engaged in solving real community problems.
Local public administrations and civil society organizations in Moldova, have the mission to educate
and engage youth in civic action—the very mission of the civic education curriculum. Therefore, a
recognized relationship should exist between formal classroom study and the goals of the local public
administration and the NGO community. Civil society organizations have the opportunity to be working
together with schools to enable students to learn in their domain of expertise while accomplishing the civic
education curriculum goals.
Speranţa, in partnership with the Educational Society for Malopolska (MTO), and Peace Corp
Moldova, is introducing two successful participative civic education programs in 18 to 24 communities
in Moldova. These civic programs (Village and PA) will be evaluated in partnership with SIEDO and The
Ministry of Education to explore an official relationship between civil society organizations and the public
schools in order to achieve their many common goals for adolescent civic development.
Essentially these children choose everything in a village. They design a "Peep" which is an identity, not their own, with a biography and so on. Then they speak through this "Peep" in all public discussion. This all leads to a village/town getting constructed. The children choose on a government, city planning, dividing up public versus private land, tyrant-ran village, whatever they choose goes. The point is to get them involved in decision making and all sorts of decision processes. This way, hopefully, they will become more active citizens in real society.
I have been actively taking part with a group of 11th graders, two hours a week. Our group decided on the name "Peepville." Although my group is older than many others who are participating throughout Moldova, they tend to stay focused, and excited when I show overt enthusiasm.
I know, the "Peeps" look like voodoo dolls. Another interesting fact is that all the groups throughout Moldova are keeping track of their "Village Project" through an online blog. Check it out here: http://cetatenieactiva.com/

2010-11-22T11:44:00.000+02:00

I’ve been here for more than a year now which means in some ways I’ve acculturated without maybe realizing it. One example is learning that the private busses get me to the capital city Chisinau much faster. These are sketchy guys who you walk by and they just say “ChisinAU!” and you just sit in the van until it fills up. It took me awhile to realize that this option is the best as they go straight to Chisinau while others top to pick up others and let others off in villages. This process can get annoying if impatient. Instead, like I mentioned, in private vance you just have to wait until they are full – which is what I’m doing now, writing in a notebook, to pass the time, and hopefully put on my blog (which is what I am doing now I guess). I have not mad any good entries in a long time. I guess this rapidly approaching winter will solve that issue.

So why am I going to Chisinau on a Wednesday? Well, it turns out that we got all the funding necessary for a playground at “Evrica,” the street children organization that requested me as a volunteer. I have to go to the bank and sign forms to get access to the money, and get this playground installed before winter. The grant was through a Peace Corps Partnership Program (PCPP). This essentially is a project that Peace Corps Volunteers get approved, then gets placed on the PC website. Normally this means that the volunteers get their friends and families to give towards their project. In my case an American NGO lead by Moldovans in Washington DC did all the fundraising necessary for the project. Their name: Casa Mare. They were very hardworking and persistent in doing so.

So I am excited. For many reasons. I am glad to be getting something concrete installed as well as knowing that my efforts are working in some way. The playround will have a sandbox, two slides, a swing for four, monkey bars, and a titter-totter. Also we have funding for balls, games, and a ping pong table.

I feel more settled in Balti now, but currently moved. The apartment is better than the last. I was completely happy in the last one, but my landlord sold my apartment and bought this new one. So here I am. I have two bedrooms, and as of yesterday hot water, which I still have not used yet. After doing this post I will have a hot shower. I have been bucket bathing for about 16 months now. To be honest it gets you clean, and frankly I’m used to it. I have grown to realize that the challenges here are not condition or amenities, they tend to be mental challenges. Challenges with dealing with others that may not appreciate your efforts, challenges with wondering if you are actually making a difference. What you’re doing. These things tend to weigh heavier than having to heat up water in a tea pot and splash yourself from a bucket.

A Little Sarcasm

2010-09-28T11:40:00.003+03:00

Well any of you all who know me know that I like to joke around a lot. A lot of the time these jokes or lines I say tend to be pretty stupid, but I like to say them anyway, as I really don't have what people call a “filter.” If I think something is funny, I usually say it.

Here in Moldova, in Romanian, these jokes do not translate very well as they tend to be sarcastic. Although, I must say that these kind of things are getting much better for me as Moldovans around me are beginning to understand me. A great example of such a joke is something that I have always thought to say to a Moldovan, and finally had a good opportunity. Here in Moldova they are big on slippers, especially come winter. In the village I had a pair for getting around outside, and a pair strictly for the house. I think that if I wore the outside pair inside, or even joked about it my host mom would have gutted me like one of her chickens. Trust me she is good at it, one day I came home from work to find all 90 dead. Anyway, so slippers in Moldova. A very popular pair of slippers are a comfy looking bunch, with the word “sport” sewed into the tops of them (I wish I had a picture for you all).

I have always wanted to joke with a vendor in the piata about this, but decided not to. Yesterday I was at work after about a week off because of some health problems (that’s another long story) and saw that my coworker Ana was wearing these slippers. I immediately smiled, but tried to hide it, and in the middle of our conversation with a stone cold serious face asked, “soooo, what kind of sports can you play in those?” pointing to her slippers. She actually thought this was really funny, and I was really glad. I know the joke is really lame, but it is the kind of sarcasm that I miss, and that I notice I still cling to, I simply refuse to give it all up. It is something that I miss about our culture in USA.

Not everyone is sarcastic in the USA, and I agree that too much sarcasm can probably be seen as a sign of weakness, just simply annoying, and even exhausting at points. But I would say that it is something that defines American humor, and I tend to miss that. To cope with this I do simple one-liners like the slipper one daily, and I find that I enjoy my day, and Moldovans around me too, as they are not used to it. I think it really is a great way to spread our American culture to Moldovans, especially in the workplace. Speaking of which, I should probably be on my way right now.

Settled-in? and why Russian sucks + update

2010-07-29T11:29:00.003+03:00

So I guess I'm settled into my new place. I can't believe that I have been living in this apartment, and in Balti, for almost three months now. I guess the one downfall about my moving here is that I do not use, and can not use, Romanian as much. Living in Hirbovat I spoke it constantly at work, and obviously for everything with my host family. Here in Balti the majority on the streets speak Russian. I would guess that within Moldova this city has the highest amount of Russian speakers. A lot of them speak Russian, and only Russian, but when I speak to them in Romanian they understand what I'm saying. I honestly have not had too many experiences where I was doomed. Though yesterday when I got a haircut the lady did let out a pretty big sigh when I told her I spoke no Russian. Thinking of it though, in that situation I should have been the one letting out the big sigh.

Anyway, there is minimal Romanian practicing here for me, and if I want to get better it would have to be through a tutor or some mainly Romanian speaking friends - which I am working on. Spending time at home in Balti though is interesting because I'm by myself, and have nobody to talk to like I did with a host family. The point and fact of the matter is that my Romanian level is at a halt, and the idea of learning Russian seems ridiculous to me.

I do recognize that I am in a unique opportunity living in a city that speaks Russian, and that I have a year left and if I tried really hard I could pick up a thing or two - outside of the 11.3 words I know at this point. But this is what is discouraging. 1. Russian is really hard, anybody will admit that. 2. I studied Romanian intensively for two months, about 4-5 hours a day, 6 days a week, lived with a host family for a year, and I am about average at Romanian. Now I live by myself, don't have a chance (or am I convincing myself of this???) at intensive classwork, or a family to practice it with. I guess I think of how hard I worked on learning Romanian, and what level I am at now after a year, and then I think of picking up Russian - seems too much.

I have recently decided that I do want to learn another language though. I just think that I would like to learn another Romance language as it would 'click' faster.

Living up here with a site mate has been good. We have been pretty good at holding ourselves to running about four times a week for over a month now which is good. We are expecting another new volunteer up here in Balti with us the around the 6th which will be great. At this point the grant writing process is moving along quite well. We are almost finished writing the proposal in both English and Romanian. Now we need to find possible funders who would be willing to fund the playground for our street children center. Speaking of which, I better go and work on that now.

A touch on work, and a few random photos.

2010-07-07T15:18:00.003+03:00

Overall things are picking up. I have been in Balti for a month now. I have began to understand how the street children organization functions and we have been looking into the possibilities of a playground. I am not sure yet where we can find funding for such a project, but I have started looking. Having some kind of material or activities at this center is probably the biggest problem we have identified. These children have a wonderful facility, but simply do not have anything to dig into. Another problem that we would love to resolve is the problem we have with food transportation. We have a kitchen, but since the center is funded through the mayor's office there is a central kitchen where it is all made. Due the the fact that our center functions 24/7 we have to get somebody to take a bus and carry each day's food in bags. This can be complicated when there are many at the center as the containers full of food are very heavy. It is often a two-person job, and when the children at the center are little they can't help! So! We need a car basically. Haha. The most ironic thing about it all is that the mayor's office has budgeted us money for gas, but because we have access to no car we can't use it. Interesting predicament that I am hoping we can resolve.

Below are some random pictures from my days here.

Every evening it has been just pouring outside for probably a month now. This is the view out of my kitchen window from last night.

These are "Smilies," some fries that my sitemate convinced me we should bake. They are probably the most unhealthy thing in the world. Between the two of us we couldn't finish this many.

Here is the entrance to my apartment building on a sunny day. I live on the second floor, but on the opposite side of the building.

Few articles

2010-07-06T17:53:00.004+03:00

Here are a few recent articles on Moldova's situation.

Europe's poorest send less money home

Moldovan Constitutional Court gives green light to referendum to change in presidential elections

Moldovan Leader Defiant In "Soviet Occupation" Row With Russia

Things Done Changed (again), I moved!

2010-06-14T19:04:00.004+03:00

So I moved. I switched 'sites' as we call it as Peace Corps Volunteers. I now live in Balti, the second biggest city in Moldova (I think). The place is great, and there is even another volunteer in the city with me. I am now assigned to an organization which focuses on street children, or children from rough family situations. The organization is open 24hours a day, and has all sorts of services. Below are a few pictures of my new apartment. I live on my own now and it is awesome. It's been hot out lately and I just bought a fan. About 35 C, which I think is 95 F. Ahh!

Marx, Engels, Lenin

My kitchen.

Room.

Bed. Notice the carpet on the wall. Very Moldovan.

2010-05-26T02:40:00.001+03:00

church in park. chisinau.

wrestling at our 'hram,' village birthday. winner gets a ram.

2010-05-26T02:20:00.004+03:00

woman walking the village goats.

dead plant by my window.

our outside sink.

door to a village building.

2010-05-21T17:51:00.003+03:00

woman at the market cutting up a cabbage.

casey throwing darts.

vendor in the market.

village boy.

2010-05-19T11:10:00.002+03:00

peeling paint.

'priza' or plug-in.

village boy.

natasha.

2010-05-18T17:56:00.002+03:00

our new chickens.

abandoned house.

typical car.

our puppy looking at one of our chickens.

2010-05-18T11:20:00.001+03:00

Photos.

2010-05-10T23:53:00.001+03:00

So I decided to finally start putting all of my photos in one album on picasa. You can find it here, equipped with captions. I had multiple different albums in the picasa website, but figured to throw them in one would be much better. I've got them organized and I plan on updating them as regularly as possible. You can also get linked to my albums from the link on the left.

Products in Moldova

2010-05-05T10:33:00.001+03:00

So I never really thought when I signed up for the Peace Corps I would have high speed DSL installed in my room, a cell phone, and a blog like this updated whenever wanted. I'm not complaining because there are plenty of other challenges outside of conditions, but I do bring it up because of the impressions I had before writing an application to the Peace Corps. I thought I would be in a tent somewhere without a bath. Within the application process they ask what kinds of conditions you would be comfortable in where and I said "I am open to any conditions," giving me the feeling I would be somewhere really rural. Wait a second, I am somewhere rural! This leads me to an odd observation I make daily about Moldova with all of its products available.

Moldova has almost everything commercially available to it that other countries have, yet the salaries here do not match the available products. It is kind of an odd combination. I think it forces Moldovans to strive to a level they shouldn't. Almost everyone, even in villages have cell phones. Companies like Orange have got their fingers in almost every community, and I can buy more prepaid minutes for my cell in any village store. But cell phones is not where it gets complicated. This gets more complicated with larger more expensive items like a fridge, car, or TV. These items are often priced in Euros, while people here use the Lei as currency. If it is priced in Lei, it is very high compared to the average annual salary.

I think the availability of commercial products complicates the level of development Moldova is in, and forces a Moldovan to strive beyond their means. I think all of the available products are in the faces of Moldovans daily, plus Russian television pollutes the Moldovan mind as they think that ‘this’ is the level that they need to be living at, yet the prices are so high that it is nearly impossible for a Moldovan to afford many products if they are living on a Moldovan salary without remittances from family members. I say this because in order for any Moldovan to buy this they have to have a family member work abroad to afford it. I think that with this complication it may even force some to work abroad as they feel they belong on that level, with 'those' products.

Some of the luckiest Moldovans I have seen have an extra apartment that they rent out, making money off of the rent it brings. If it is in the capital city they can normally live off of the money this brings, but this is a more uncommon situation.

I think many of these things I notice because I am an outsider coming into Moldova's culture. Especially living in a village where I see the true level that Moldovans are living at. When I come into the capital city Chisinau I am bombarded by all sorts of products available that the average villager would never be able to afford, but maybe because it is available and around them they strive to. When the only real means for making money is work abroad, I think this could almost force people into work abroad. I feel that many see all the available products surrounding them, and they feel a sense of belonging in 'that' life so urge themselves to make money in order to live on the best level they see available to them. The problem with this is that the price often comes with many sacrificing themselves to work abroad, while not investing their time, energy, and knowledge here in there own country. As a simple observer it makes me nervous. This issue gets even more complicated when you considering the level that Moldovans were living under during Soviet rule for 50 years. If that does not give them a sense of belonging on a higher standard of living, and now dropping back some I don't know what would.

Photo Update

2010-04-30T11:57:00.000+03:00

I really wanted to put a lot of descriptions next to these photos but after I uploaded them they got all messed up on blogger. That is me with a travel putter my friends sent, so awesome, thanks guys. There is a picture here with my host mom showing us one of our baby rabbits. This huge hill picture makes me want to get a bike, or something with wheels so that I can fly down to the center of my village faster. And there is another photo here, with a house with a green top in the center, that is my house. The other house is just a traditional Moldovan house with a straw roof top, which I just think is pretty cool. Enjoy.

frustrations, romanian, lost laughs, good awkward times

2010-04-20T19:51:00.001+03:00

The toughest thing for me here is the lack of structure. I find myself repeatedly worried on Sundays asking "what am I going to do this week?" Not all volunteers in my program have this problem, but I sure seem to. Yes there is an NGO that has requested me, and I dedicate time to them everyday. But the most frustrating thing about this is how I have repeatedly tried to set us up with regular meetings, and this seems to be almost impossible. We do have meetings, which is nice, but they are quite irregular. On top of this we do not have set hours that we are open. This makes things quite slow-moving and frustrating when used to the rate of work in America. We do have a great project plan that I actually do believe in, and so I continually push to find funders and so on. It all seems to come down to money. The NGO where I work had a huge amount of funding for the three years prior to when I arrived, and they were spoiled with large salaries, as well as little monitoring in budget writing. Now nobody has salaries, making it quite difficult for me to motivate them to work for nothing. It is definitely the most challenging thing Peace Corps volunteers face in Moldova - a post Soviet mentality. At the same time I recognize and understand the people I work with. Would I want to work for nothing in America? I mean this is a funny question since I am volunteering, but all of my housing and food is taken care of so I really have nothing to worry about.

I have been getting tutored once a week for two hours. I sometimes feel like I dread going. I feel like I'm a little kid whose mom is forcing him to wash behind his ears or something. "Do I really have to go mom?" Well the answer is no, it is optional, but I choose to anyway because it is for the better. I personally feel like there are no excuses not to go, and yet I still only go once a week. I dread it in some ways, but I always feel good right after I finish. I feel as if I have accomplished something. Learning another language is hard. You really have to want it. The most difficult part about this situation for me is that I know I could get by these two years without problems at the level I am at now, but also know that the level I'm at could definitely increase.

I think of myself as a serious person, but I also like to joke with people a lot of the time. This can make for some of the funniest awkward situations when jokes get lost in translation. For instance I repeatedly try to use the word "magician" in Romanian, just because the way you pronounce it cracks me up, thus, I look for places to use it. One situation, to be exact the worst situation I used it, was when an intoxicated aggressive man asked me if I can get him to a visa to America, Christopher's response: "I'm not a magician." Probably a little too harsh, and no laughs. Moldovans do not like sarcasm too much. Luckily my host family loves it, and so we throw it around from time to time. Sometimes I cannot believe how far we have elaborated on a story. Lost laughs.

Awkward situations are funny. In fact I have come to love them. Joining the Peace Corps has thrown me into some places far out of my comfort zone. Now I've accommodated to most of them. I'll never forget the first week I was thrown into a host family with about a 3 1/2 word vocabulary. If that's not frightening I don't know what is. It's incredible stuff. The reason I mention this is that yesterday my host mom had a guest over, and I didn't know her. I was super tired as we ate food at the table, and these women were chatty Cathying it up. I didn't say much, and the woman probably thought that I did not understand much, and she said "ohhh, he's shy because I'm here." I started laughing because I was just thinking to myself "you've got to be kidding me lady, this is nothing, everyday I meet new people and eating and drinking wine with you is basically nothing." I had to go on to explain that all is well, that I can speak, and that I just am tired. I'm just realizing that I am growing some. Getting out of my comfort zone as much as I have during my time here has finally caused me to notice changes. Good changes, just not always easy changes. Although work may be slow, I know that there is definitely some personal growth going on here, and to think about the amount of time I have left really blows my mind in this sense.

Oh, and for a quick laugh, I introduced my host mother Ludmia to Labron James via this youtube clip. Go America! Stuff like this is awesome to show Moldovans. The tough part is explaining how many meters tall he is, and how many meters he jumps.

OH - and look at what I added to the right column of my blog, you can send me text messages, up to five a day via the web. So go ahead and make my day. Actually, more likely would be, go ahead and wake my middle of the night. Just click the picture of the envelope, on this page, then the next page, and fill out the necessary information. If you get really confused click the 'EN' for English in the top right corner.

Easter in my world

2010-04-05T23:59:00.000+03:00

I'm not sure why, but I was not expecting much for this Moldovan Easter. I was thinking it would be the same old gig, or the Moldovan gig I have accustomed to. I was wrong, and the simplicity in which I had so much fun caught me off guard. Moldovans celebrate Christ's rising by going to church at about 2am with a basket of food and themselves to be blessed with holy water around 5 in the morning. Or this was the case for me in my village. Although I did not go to sleep, the meeting of the majority of the village around the church was quite peaceful. Around the church we gathered, with breads, meats, eggs, cucumbers, tomatoes, and candy in our baskets. Illuminating the entire scene were the candles lit from within our baskets, often placed in yet to be baked sweet bread. After all us, along with our food, got splashed/blessed with holy water we made our way home. There we sleepily ate our blessed foods before going to bed around 6:30am.
When I woke up it was around 2:30pm. My host sister said "hey, get ready, we're going to the woods." I said "good," brushed my teeth, wet wiped the necessary body parts, drank a coffee, and dressed quickly. My host family and I met up with some neighbors and village friends and headed for the woods with a fully equipped picnic. There we lounged around, ate until stuffed, and most surprisingly played some Moldovan games with a ball while listening to some classic Eastern European techno and some traditional Moldovan music playing from a stereo speaker attached to the old BMW we arrived in.
It was simple and that is why it was so beautiful. All of us were in our true light, fully relaxed, joking and making fun of each other, and appreciating each other for who we are. This among hitting each other with a pretty hard ball made for a lot of laughing. It was awesome to see my host mom relaxed and laughing and dancing. The woman is one of the most hard working people I have ever seen, and deserves to hang out and relax. I also got to hang out with my neighbor Victor who is pretty cool. I think what I liked the most was how we were making jokes and I didn't feel uncomfortable doing so.
Sometimes I think that Moldovans have too many holidays, but you have to give them credit for actually celebrating them. In America for the most part a holiday equals a three day weekend. Here in Moldova it often makes for a three day weekend, or often enough even four, but these weekends come with obligatory gatherings and celebrations which simply put can be refreshing.
Oh, and another thing, I guess instead of saying "good day," I have to say, "Christ has risen" for 40 days. And if somebody says it to me I have to respond by saying "it's true, he has risen." You may not think that this is a big task, but in a village where you say "good day" to everybody that you pass, it can be a change of pace. Anyway, Easter was awesome, and I hope any of you all back home reading this had a good time too.

Today

2010-03-25T21:16:00.000+02:00

OH so today. Not too shabby, stayed pretty busy. I took pictures throughout the day, and threw them on gooooood ollllld picasa - check them if you dare. There is a picture in there of me with a welding mask. Some dude I talk to on the walk to work most days, he is about my age, saw me with my camera and told me to let him take a picture of me with it. Kind of weird, but of course I said yes.

One thing that I hope works out is our participation in a film competition. Me and some local youth met today and whipped together a pretty good idea for a short film. Actually that picture of me from above was when we were trying to figure out where to film from. The Plural + Film Festival is an international film festival that allows youth to reflect about migration and diversity. It should be pretty awesome if we put it together.

I finished up the day by working in the grape field above our house for a couple of hours. It was cool to hang out with my host mom some, and to show her that I can actually do some work. The view of the sun going down from our hillside into the valley was really pretty and a good way to finish up the day. I bucket bathed and here I am. The weekend is near, and I think I may go to Cahul to do some work and have some fun.

Go Huskies - big game.

Even if you give a Mărţişor...

2010-03-09T15:26:00.000+02:00

A conversation between myself, and a 2nd grade kid from my village:
Me: "Hey what's up?"
Him: "Nothing."
Me: (While pointing to a Mărţişor pinned to his jacket) "Nothing? Who gave you that?"
Him: While smiling, "A girl."
Me: "A pretty girl?"
Him: Big pause, thinking, shrugging, "...She works..."

Yep, I think Spring might have just happened

2010-02-26T15:36:00.000+02:00

Today I went to work at around 12 o'clock to find that it was locked and didn't really know what to do. I looked in my wallet to find about 28 lei, and figured I would go for a walk and get a haircut to waste some time. I arrived about 10 minutes too late for a haircut, and ran into this funeral ceremony. Here they carry the body through the village and to the cemetery for burial. Everyone stops on the streets, both cars and people in respect. In the back of the crowd is two people. One person has a basket of treats and walks up to everybody on the street. As you can see I got biscuits and some candy. The other guy has a bucket full of wine and he walks up to everybody offering a cup to honor the dead.
Here you can see the candy I was given. It was very interesting to observe how everybody stopped and paid respect. The experience was also very interesting due to the pure spontaneity of it all.

A fellow volunteer Ryne is coming to visit me today, so my host mom hurriedly cleaned my room for him/me. Moldovans are really big on being good hosts, and want things to be really nice for them. I feel bad, and tell her this, because I simply wanted her to help me shake-out my rug, but instead she scrubbed my floors and much more. Spring is out though, and as you can see my dog 'Tîmcă' is enjoying the sun. Another nice indicator is that the flowers have peaked through the dirt, and are reaching out of dormancy. As am I. I decided today to get a tutor for my language. Which is an interesting tale in itself. This basically entailed me walking to a strangers door, pounding on it, and explaining that she was recommended to me as a good teacher. She seemed pretty nice, and it will be cool to meet with her this coming Wednesday to get a move on and a bump up on my language skills.

Village Photos

2010-02-22T17:53:00.000+02:00

Here I got to visit the wonderful village of Lozova where Matt (another rad volunteer) and I hit up Loz Vegas and got crazy.
During our language training Neal explained to us why Louisiana 'should' be the richest state in the U.S.
A weathered sign where there used to be a bar.
Me thinking how ridiculous I look in my village with an orange jacket - since (I'm generalizing) all Moldovan guys wear black jackets and hats.
Where I have to decide whether or not to choose ice or mud on my street.
A trail that links my side of the village with the other.

Spring and stuff

2010-02-22T14:59:00.000+02:00

A good Monday. It's sunny out, which means there is no snow, now the next challenge is mud. But still, it is beautiful out, and I almost forgot what everything looks like in my village when it is not blanketed with snow. I'd like to think it is spring, but I'm scared another snow will come as soon as I've accepted that it's spring, so I'm a bit apprehensive.

This morning I woke up and did my laundry. This is not an easy task, especially when you wait until you have one pair of underwear left. I told my host mom that "I'm having an underwear crisis, and need to wash my clothes." She laughed, and helped me find the needed supplies: bucket, soap, water, my hands. It was a nice day so I think it will actually dry out and I won't have to wait for it to freeze, then unfreeze, then put it by the heater for it to dry - it might just be dry today. I also had an awesome lunch which has triggered me into a great mood. This fried bread called turtă, and soup with a chicken breast. I'm pretty sure that is my favorite Moldovan lunch. I don't know what has gotten into my host mom, but she has really been stepping it up with the meals.

Overall things are moving along at work, but we will see this week. We have started discussing the specifics of our budget, and we are having a community meeting tomorrow to discuss the 'newer' direction of our organization. We hope that this meeting will spark some constructive criticism, and maybe spark interest which will lead to more community involvement, or better yet, some people who want to help us.

In other, sadder, recent news: two of my cats died, I left my second debit card in an ATM, and my computer screen's pixels are dying. One of the cats was my favorite, and we have no idea why it died. The debit card system here is different than in USA (I blame that, not myself (denial?)) because it gives you your money and then you have to request the card, so I often put the money in my wallet, turn, and leave. With the computer I might have to send it to USA to get it fixed, which sucks because I just got internet at my house. Sigh. I'm not going to let it get me down too much.

A sweet update.

2010-02-16T21:35:00.001+02:00

I took these pictures today! So I put them here simply to share before I begin my blog update.

Today was productive, yet funny as well. I believe that I have mentioned it before, but Yaktrax are provided to all us volunteers since we are an investment of the American people, and they care about us. I've been using my pair a lot, but as the snow has melted some, today I left without them. Mistake. My road connects with the main road with a quick uphill spot, and it is here I ran into trouble.

As I made my way half way up this short hill that is a sheet of solid ice, I realized I had no traction. I fell down face first on all fours scrambling to get my balance and stand up. It was comical to say the least. On the main road watching me were two women watching and laughing hysterically, along with a neighbor of mine Iurie. Recognizing my audience I became more nervous and said "I don't know what to do!" in Romanian. The women continued to laugh while I was slipping all over the place loosing ground downhill. The women could not keep their composure while laughing hiding their smiles and turning away from me. At one point I stopped trying because I was stuck in one spot and didn't know what to do. I was like a lost puppy that didn't know what to do.

Using my humiliation as fuel, somehow, I made it to the top of the ice sheet with both fists above my head in celebration, and a face of embarrassment. The two women were trying not to laugh as I met them there, but they couldn't help it. All I could manage to do was laugh and say, "I didn't have traction!" I then joined my neighbor Iurie into the valley towards work.

Oh work (sigh). It is going well, but slow. We are slowly including more and more people in our meetings to have more community involvement, which is ideal. I sometimes guide meetings with activities like today for instance. I had written on a big piece of butcher paper linked questions which produced better strategic planning. What is tough is when we've decided on a goal, and then somebody gets on something completely unrelated to the goal, and I have to ask where the connection exists.

So what we are working on? I think I have mentioned it to a lot of you all (friends) but I should put it here anyway. In a nutshell - In Moldova there are a lot of middle aged people working abroad in other countries, and because of this the parents often leave their children with one parent or with grandparents to live. This is an interesting problem because they are often shielded from poverty, yet develop other socially vulnerable problems. No guidance from parents, forced to grow up too fast with responsibilities, and so on many teens act out in different ways. So it is this target group we have decided to focus on. We think that our role can be to promote communication between parents and these children to improve and preserve their relationship. We think that we can achieve this goal through four objectives. These would be providing Skype time to children in our village to call parents, a psychologist to discuss the issue, information and resources that exist in Moldova for parents and children, and provide activities which produce materials to send such as letters, drawings, and photos, thus improving communication with between parents and children. It is a beginning, and we are planning best we can before applying for grants.

Another side project that I have started to explore is the weight room beneath the high school. I hope that we can work with community members to plan, then apply for a grant which would provide more weights and equiptment, do some repairs, and establish a more strongly organized program there. This is just in the beginning and I will be discussing with the main guy next week.

I personally have been busy in this weight room lifting weights three times a week. I am glad that I found it because I have been making some friends and staying in decent shape. There have been a couple of funny stories in the weight room. One would be the main guy there who is training me Vasile telling me that my calf muscles are small, and asking me if I want to grow them. The other was when I was resting in between sets and I made eye-contact with a guy my age who is in really good shape. I was resting and said "I don't know what to do (nu ştiu ce să fac)." He responded by pointing at his bicep, looking at me, and saying "weak (slab)." I did not take it too personally, I laughed, and then went to do some curls. It has been cool to hang out there and lift weights with guys from my community because they are dedicated to something regular, and therefore in my opinion take life seriously.

So again, to sandwich this blog post let us end where we started. That damn ice slope Winter Olympics 2010 patch. As I returned from work to that spot with a smile I was thinking, dang, I am going to fall on my face. And I saw a woman on the bottom part, while I was at the top. I paused, and said to her, "I fell down here this morning," and she said "me too." Then she said, "here, use this fence," as she shimmed up. I smiled, and when she reached me she helped as I began shimmying down by saying "take my hand." I hopped over, took her hand, and made my way to my house. It was awesome to see a complete stranger help me out, but it was even funnier to think that my day ended where it began.

Snowball fight and such.

2010-02-04T16:37:00.001+02:00

So yesterday I started a snowball fight. It is one of those things you learn over time, that is, when you see a group of kids playing with snow you just know that if you lob one snowball in there that it will start a catastrophe. And it did. Before I knew it I had about 20 kids (no joke) throwing snowballs at me. It was kind of rough, but I like to think I held my own. Moldovans don't grow up playing sports that use a lot of throwing (in my opinion) so my accuracy plus the fact that the average age of my enemies was 10.3 years of age helped me.

I'm glad that I made the decision to start this snowball fight, and peg a few kids with snowballs. I was having a rough day and it made us all laugh. People walking by were laughing so hard at us. It was great.

Anyway, today I went the the raion center in Anenii Noi to get internet at my house. It will be installed soon and I will no longer be only using it at work. So that's pretty cool. What else, hmmmm. Oh I had a pretty good beard going and I shaved it finally. I didn't shave for about a month, and I think that's the longest I have gone without shaving. Not shaving in Moldova means that you are the Pastor of the church, or lazy. Or people don't shave when somebody dies because they are in mourning. To say little on the matter, it attracted attention. Now I feel like I look fresh and young again/more Moldovan.

I'll try to update soon with more action I promise.

Finally put up some photos!!!

2010-01-21T12:12:00.000+02:00

Hey, I finally uploaded some of my photos. I put them in my web albums. There you can find albums from my Pre Service Training up to present.

mp3 player + phone + Moldova = (________)

2010-01-18T15:27:00.000+02:00

In America I'm pretty sure most cell phones have the mp3 player options, but if I remember correctly myself and my friends largely underutilized this feature. In Moldova they love this capability and use it to it's full capability. Not only will you find most people using their cell phone as their primary mp3 player with headphones, but without. This meaning that they use their personal cell phone as a boom box, and you'd be surprised at how loud these bad boys can get. People blast them while walking down the street, while sitting in a bus, standing - well, anything really. Witnessing this as an American makes me laugh for two reasons. The first reason is that if there was somebody blasting music next to you on the bus most Americans would loose patience and say something about how the person was being rude or inconsiderate to those around them. Or, the other American would not say anything while their blood boiled in anger, and while thinking of wringing their neck the whole bus ride. And then to the first friend they saw they would exclaim, "you wouldn't believe this guy on the bus, he was blasting his music and being such a jerk!" Here, blasting music on the bus is accepted. I accept it, but with laughter at the cultural differences. I think I even like it? Okay, so the other reason that it is funny, possibly more funny to me personally is what is often playing/blasting on these cell phones to those around them. I would guess about 50% of the time it is in English, and if I'm lucky, 40% of the time hardcore gangster rap in English. This means that most likely they don't know what is being said, but just like the way it sounds - which is cool. But it gets funny when you see a 12 year old boy walking with gangster rap blaring "get out my face!, get out my face!, get out my face!," (lyrics I heard on the way home to lunch today), or other favorites such as Eminem, DMX "Rough Riders Anthem," 50 cent, and most popular to Moldovans, Akon. I even remember this past summer doing my best to translate the a DMX song for a guy I met named Sergiu, and I don't think I did too bad really.... And in another situation I remember explaining how DMX is in jail, but to do this I had to jump a fence and grip it from the other side for them to understand, but that's besides the point. These mp3 player situations are entertaining, and just one of the interesting cultural differences I find when comparing Moldova to America. If my phone only had this....

A few quick words

2010-01-17T15:36:00.000+02:00

It just snowed again and yesterday night my host sister Natalia and I went for a little walk up into the hills of our village. It was pretty fun in the snow and we got some cool views of our snow covered village. While we were up in the hills, where many use the land for farming, we walked into places that she had never even been. But on the way we got to take some pictures of the village below, some of which are pretty cool. I have been realizing that my language is not that bad if I can go on a walk and we can shoot the breeze for a couple of hours without me having to think too hard. On the other hand I know that I have plateaued and need to step it up a notch by studying either on my own, or with a tutor. Anyway, enjoy these pictures of my village.

The film "Ca La Moldova"

2010-01-15T12:36:00.000+02:00

I encourage anybody who reads my blog, and is interested in the situation in Moldova to watch this documentary film called "Ca La Moldova" (This is Moldova). It is 60 minutes long with subtitles.

(The first film is the trailer, the second is the full 60 minute film).

The Life and Times of Jan. in Moldova

2010-01-15T11:19:00.000+02:00

This is a picture of the Christmas festival in the high school.

This is towards the center of my village. The church, and a well in the foreground.
Walnuts. My host mom spends a lot of time cracking open with a hammer, later she plans on selling them in the market.
Some of my frozen clothes that were hung out to dry.
Host dad and host sister on New Years. It is about 5 in the morning. There was a lot of fog, that's why this picture is not very good.

After a long night of eating and dancing.

The Holidays

2010-01-06T13:16:00.000+02:00

So today is the day. I had my bath. This includes me dancing over a puddle of water in Kama Sutra-like poses while laughing at myself. Yes I've been here for about seven months and this still makes me laugh. Out loud. But I guess on worse days it makes me cuss out loud. I could bathe everyday if I really wanted to, but the hassle plus my laziness equals out to about once a week plus wet wipes. I'm cool with that. Immediately after my bath feeling “so fresh and so clean” makes me more aware of my actions as not to make any quick movements to ignite the sweat process. I have to be careful for at least a day before I get crazy like that.

The winter here has been cold, but nothing too crazy. We had a good snow mid December, and it's still lingering around, causing me to walk with attention. But not too much attention. It's kind of like when you leave something in your room, and you're walking back there to get it, and then you're thinking “what is it I was looking for again?” and then you remember, “Oh yeah, not to slip and fall on my face.” That's what it's like for me anyway.

The winter in my village does have some beautiful days. The snow is still in the hills and at certain times when the sun is going down I catch a view of them blanketed with orange sunlight. My village has some interesting geography with houses in the hills and its village center cramped in the bottom of intersecting valleys. Due to the intersecting valleys there are many hills and different views into valleys. I had a hint of this before, but it became more apparent to me after some youth and I were delivering clothes on foot in our village from a clothing drive I helped organize.

This clothing exchange took some planning ahead of time, and even after the planning it did not

run perfectly. Not to chop this tree to the ground before I explain what happened though. It's success impressed myself, and I feel comfortable believing it impressed others in the village as well. By the way that's saying something because I'm a tough critic on things I've accomplished. Basically we set it up like a clothing drive goes in America, with as a contest between classes in the high school. We also put a box for money that went for candy. The final week we sang carols (I didn't, I don't know them in Romanian) to collect money. We collected a ton of clothes, a good sufficient amount of money, and toys. That was the easier part. With a list of vulnerable families we used from the mayor's office we had to match clothes we had with children of that age and size. Then package them and package the candies and toys together.

The planning and logistics I could elaborate on more, but aren't as fun. What was fantastic is the mode in which we delivered them the first day. We used a hose drawn sleigh and dressed up as Santa (“Mos Craciun” is the Moldovan version). I was really excited as we flew down the street pulled by two horses with other youth volunteers and our organization's Director. What I was not quite prepared for was the situations in houses that I would be visiting. I am all for helping out poorer children, but it was rough at times. What was amazing was to see how happy these kids were to see us with packages for them. Younger children were yelling in anticipation of our gifts as we approached their doorstep. In tradition many of them recited Christmas poems. The experience can not be put into words. We delivered over 65 packages with clothing, toys, and assorted candy. It is awesome to know that our youth volunteers and myself put something together that brightened children's day with our surprise gifts. Feel free to look at the pictures of the whole experience.

Switching gears, next on the list, another topic, is this holiday season in Moldova. First of all they don't celebrate Christmas on the 25th. No they're not insane, but they did live under the USSR, and because of this they have always celebrated on the 7th of January. So I can't say much of that yet, but I'm sure it will be a blastface. I did have the chance to visit the village where I trained, and where my heart is, the wonderful village of Vasieni. It is here I spent the 25th with my original host family all together. I also got to meet my host mom Tamara's granddaughter who lives in Beligum. She is the same age and she speaks English so it was awesome. The food was also great. The next day I spent there getting my butt kicked in dominoes for about fiver hours by Vasile and his friend. I'm still not sure if I understand all the rules. Over all it was a relaxing weekend.

The New Year holiday was celebrated largely with my current host family. To put it simply we had a 'masa' (which means table) but really means a table full of food, too much food! We danced until 7:30am, which was crazy.

Signing off, Christopher

Alright, it has snowed a bunch...

2009-12-22T15:53:00.000+02:00

Hey so it is winter in the wonderful Moldova. There has been plenty of snow in my village, nearly 2 feet. It has not snowed for a couple of days, and is melting some now, so it is just really slippery on the ice. The PC has provided us all with a pair of YAKTRAX, which I sort of scoffed at initially, but now think are the coolest thing in the world. Well, maybe not the coolest thing in the world, but they are pretty impressive. I'm like a god on the ice. I can't slip. Or that is the way I think of it now. I plan on going for a walk to take some wonderful pictures. Yesterday I wish I had my camera. Their was a perfect moment when I left work and the sun was going down and the sky was clear so the light was bouncing off of the snow. Of course it happened to be one of the only days that I left my camera at home. For now you all will have to take my word for it. I promise some pictures sooner or later.

So I finished the art exchange, for now!

2009-12-03T15:28:00.000+02:00

Alright, so I finished the One World Classrooms International Art Exchange, or half of it. I got all the kids together and took pictures of them all holding their art. You can find their photos here or by clicking on "MY PHOTOS" in the right hand column.

I happened to do it in all three schools so it got pretty complicated at times. The way it works is each school here paints or draws 25 pictures and sends them off with their photos. These pictures are supposed to be focused on their culture and life. In return they will each participating school here will receive 25 pictures that kids made in different countries. If I have understood correctly it won't just be one country of 25 pictures, but a mixture. The point of the exchange is to learn from one an other's culture through art, which I think is awesome!

I think it will be great when we get them all 75 back and we can host some kind of exhibition of sorts. I hope to take all of the photos that I have of our children and put it on a projector. This way parents, kids, and people in the community can check out what their own children have made, as well as others from around the world. Pretty cool.

Three Funny Stories

2009-12-03T11:47:00.000+02:00

Three short funny stories/occurrences/things that have happened to me lately. I feel like every day here I have an amusing story, but I tend to forget them quickly. On the walk home I remembered these three. These have all happened within a week:

1. Salute me and you'll go to America!

I had to go into the middle school about four times for four classes today. There I had to take pictures of the kids who completed their art. The art teacher is very traditional so makes the kids get out of their seats each time I enter and leave in a sort of salutation. This equals eight different times this happened to me in about a three hour period. It is kind of embarrassing and each time I had to hold back some laughter while mumbling "No, it doesn't matter, you don't have to" while the goofier boys would yell "Chris!, Chris!" This art teacher is the same one who told these kids if they drew or painted something well an organization would take them to America. When I heard he was doing this from a woman I grabbed my head in both hands and said "oh god," great now all these kids parents must be thinking that's what I do here.

2. Tae-Kwon-Oh Crap...

Since I have actually been quite busy lately I've been on the move. Walking around the village more allows me to talk and meet with both people I know and don't know. In the past two days I have ran into the Tae-Kwon-Do instructor and twice where he has asked if i still want to get involved in "training." I told him yes yesterday, but as I walked away reality sank in: I'm pretty out of shape right now, and this guy is going whip up on me.

3. Collapse?

Last Saturday morning i was eating breakfast at the table while my host sister was sitting on a bed watching TV. I was dressed and bucket-bathed and ready to rumble at our Thanksgiving party with other PC volunteers in Chisinau. While i took my last bite of cabbage salad I turned to my sister to say something. The turn wasn't fast or sudden. I didn't get up or plop down on the chair. A simple turn. Apparently the Moldovan Gods aren't to fond of this: a sudden collapse occurred mid-sentence. My face was shocked and my sister instantly was laughing to tears because of it. My instant conclusion: chair broke, period. Nope! Waaaay off. I look down at our nice wood floor to see I've punctured a foot long hole in the floor with a chair leg. Shock sets in further. I got up, removed the chair and approached the host mom to explain with horror on my face, (sister laughing harder now). Host mom sees, now she is laughing at me because I'm shocked and don't know what to say. To make things worse I have to catch the final bus from my village that leaves in 10 minutes and have to walk up the hill for that. I feel terrible and say, "Now I have a story to tell." I say thanks for lunch like a jerk, put on my back pack and leave in a shame. Guess it is time to start working out more.

Making a few contacts, and maybe a little progress too.

2009-12-01T10:24:00.000+02:00

Even though some days I feel like things are not going very well I am starting to realize that even on slow days I am making progress. I felt like in my training village in Vasieni it was easier to talk to people, and get to know them. I've talked to others and we have came to the conclusion that this was largely because there were 13 of us running around speaking our broken Romanian – we must have been the talk of the town. Because there were so many of us it made people much more open to talk to us because we were all throughout the village, and word spreads fast. As they call it “radio baba,” or older women gossiping.

I find that just through doing small things in my village it gets my face out there. I feel like it is tougher to make contacts on my own because there really is no central place where people hang out. I try to go to our piaţa market and our little shops called magazin which just carry general stuff. Just by stopping in and buying something that I really don't need provides me an opportunity to practice my language outside of my workplace and home. The fact that I am the first volunteer in my village means that people don't know what to expect from me, and to tell the truth being in a program as vague as Community and Organizational Development is not the easiest thing to describe in Romanian, so I try. It can get pretty embarrassing in certain situations being from America, I've never felt like such a novelty before. In certain situations in my village people act as if I have accomplished something by being American. Really, it blows their minds, they normally don't believe me until I talk for awhile and they hear my accent.

In the past two weeks I have actually been busy, and I have made more solid contacts within the schools in the community. These being teachers in the kindergarten and the high school. I also in general am noticing that I am much more comfortable talking to people on the street who I see on a regular basis. An art exchange program through One World Classrooms has given me the excuse to go into each of the schools and talk with teachers and discuss with them my ideas. A small but big success story is that of a younger kindergarten teacher named Aliona. I heard that Aliona studied art so figured she would be great. The first time I approached her about the art exchange she accepted but I left thinking the woman was angry. I found out later that this is mainly because Moldovans do not show as their emotions as much as Americans, especially in formal situations. I then went and visited with her again and we talked more in general, and I explained the details of this art exchange program. The third time I sat down and we were talking about art and laughing for 30 minutes while the little ones were having nap time. I tried to explain to her that I liked printmaking in college, but she had not really heard of it so she made me write it down in English so she could search for it online. When I went back to collect the art the little guys had made she took me around the whole school while I took a pictures of each kid with the art they had created. She introduced me to other teachers and I got to joke around with the kindergarteners. One kid even read me a story. While leaving each teacher told me to come back in the future, and I'm sure I will. I also told Aliona of a small grant for art supplies which would be awesome for her class. This week I plan on translating the letter and sending it off.

Also within our organization we have started the beginnings of a youth council. This allows youth to get involved in volunteer-like activities in the community and provides me with some younger contacts who have interest in their community. With them we have just started a clothing drive last week. We will then make packages for the poorer of our community, and near Christmas we are going to go around in a caruţă (horse drawn cart) and deliver our presents. The idea of us going around in a horse drawn cart is awesome and I can't wait because I'm sure we'll all get some good laughs. With the concept of a youth council I'm a little concerned as how we can foster one where I work, and how we can keep the kids interested. I'm going to try and keep a positive attitude about it.

For awhile I felt like the projects I have started are only temporary and when they finish up I will be left with nothing to do but now I'm starting to realize/hope/believe that these small projects were a great place to start. By doing some smaller things like this in the community it forces me out in public and also demonstrates what I am capable of. I also hope that by accomplishing a few things I will instill some trust in me throughout the community. In the least by getting involved in little projects I've met people and made contacts for my future two years here.

Want some fresh Moldovan mail from me?

2009-11-17T15:45:00.001+02:00

Give me your address by posting a comment, or send me your address in an email to chrisbcote@gmail.com and I'll see what I can do.

Celebrating Birthdays Before it Gets Too Cold.

2009-11-17T09:51:00.000+02:00

So it's actually hit – the cold. Yesterday marked two things relating to cold: morning frost and long underwear. It is not really really cold yet, but the earliness points to the apparent beginning of a Moldovan winter. According to a fellow volunteer's awesome/fancy pants digital watch whom I met up with: sunrise is 7:00 AM and sunset is 4:40 PM – ouch. It's colder when it's dark out.

I think a lot of other volunteers will have more of a problem with this because they are from warmer climates where the sun stays out longer. For us in the northwest it can get cold, maybe not as cold as Eastern Europe, but I get the picture (or right now I would like to think so, I'll get back to this I'm sure later in the winter). But the dark I think I am cool with. I mean it gets dark around 5:30 PM in Seattle in the winter, and we just read books and drink coffee and so on. I'm pretty sure I can get used to that. Maybe on the weekends I will feel like I have to get out of the house, and that is what other volunteers are for. More importantly than other volunteers, though, is friends within the village. I've got a little group of village friends in my simple Nokia cell phone that because it is not really cool and does not play music I'm sure Moldovans don't think it is 'frumos,' (refer to Matt's blogpost).

A couple of weeks ago I had a lot of ideas of what I can do in my village. Really what I'm concerned with is finding something I am directly responsible for on a regular basis to keep me occupied. I believe that this will eventually be what I have mentioned in earlier blog posts being some kind photography group. I had a meeting with a fellow volunteer named Kay where we decided to collaborate some to make a couple of interactive presentations to inflame interest. From this group we believe we can get together a passionate group. The problem is that not all kids have cameras. We know that there are probably grants out there, but right now I am thinking it will be better to get some kind of group together, get some curriculum together, and see what we can do with what we have. At the same time I am worried that I will be excluding kids that don't have cameras. I am hoping that we can get youth to share. One thing I know is that organizing something like this may sound simple, but doing so is taking a lot of time. It is one thing to discuss with another volunteer, then think of how we are going to explain this in Romanian, then actually getting a grip on these kids is going to be hard around the holiday season. I think we have to try though. We will see.

I find my situation here a little different than other Peace Corps Volunteers in other PC serving countries. Many think of PC and think of somebody in the green lush grass with Mount Kilamanjaro in the background and little supplies. Here I do live under some challenging conditions, but the one thing I do have is really fast internet at work. The funny thing to me about this is these two extremes existing in the same environment. Here I can skype somebody, but there is a guy on a horse drawn cart out my window. I think that I find this very amusing and so have noticed, or take interest in identifying such extremes existing in the same home or community.

I have been stressing myself out about how much or what we are doing within work. Recently I am realizing that we, in America, work at a faster pace. I realize that things here within where I work are going forward, which is great, but slowly. I have been making serious efforts to chill out when I'm at home. I have been reading a lot lately which is nice. I feel like I don't like to read really long books though – maybe I'm scared of commitment? Haha. Well it just feels so much more productive to read a bunch of smaller books to me. When I get really bored I just read out loud to the mice I hear under my floor boards. No I don't really read out loud, but I do hear them under there. Looks like they are heading indoors for winter too. I don't have a problem with them, as long as they don't take cover under my sheets.

Last weekend was quite interesting. I had a fellow volunteer over and he stayed for Friday and Saturday night. Sunday was my birthday. On Saturday we went for a walk and ran into some of my host parents relatives. She led us in and we met up with her husband who quickly chauffeured us to the beci (cellar) where we tried both of his homemade wines. The beci is the man's area. It is where they hang out and shoot the breeze. There he was quite the host. All Moldovans are really. We were eating all sorts of foods down there. Fish in tomato sauce, home made cheese which is really salty (brinza), pickles (which I had been missing), some type of pork that is basically the back fat (I didn't want to try it), walnuts that he broke us with a hammer and so on. I asked our host which of his wines he preferred the most and I almost laughed out my goodies when he pointed to a jar of homemade vodka. It is really common for men to make

homemade vodka. Turns out we spent some time in the beci eating and drinking some of his vodka celebrating my birthday early. After awhile we took a walk to the villages soccer field and before I knew it me, my friend, and this 56 year old man were having somewhat of a pull-up contest on a bar. I had a great time and it was great to ask and receive opinions from somebody about Moldova.

On a more frumos side I just got myself some shoe polish. It comes with it's own little sponge which is wonderful. Keeping clean and polished shoes is one of the many ways to a Moldovan's heart. Or that's what I hear anyway.

Moldova, It's situation: what I've observed.

2009-11-10T16:40:00.000+02:00

Being from USA a lot of times people are inevitably comparing, or asking me to compare, my country with Moldova. I often get questions, or assumptions like something is “mai rău decît voi, da?” Something being worse than you all right? I often have to let them people know that America is not perfect. The easiest things I can explain is that, “we have problems, just different problems than you have here.”

In case I have not mentioned it in other blogs posts, Moldovans right now have a situation which forces, if not tempts them to live abroad because salaries are small and jobs are not available here. With an unstable political situation many Moldovans do not jump at the idea of investing in anything other than the construction of their own homes. To generalize, but not so far off, Moldovans work abroad to survive a lot of the time. This I have observed from living in my village and visiting others.

My host father has been working abroad for the last 10 years. He is home now, and has been for just over a month, probably one of the biggest stays he has had in his own home for these 10 years. Due to the point that Moldovans are constantly searching for work abroad, they often are comparing prices and talking of exchange rates. In Chişinău you can find somewhere to exchange currencies on every block.

Since this situation with Moldovans exists, where it's citizens are so hungry to immigrate to other countries for a better salary there are a lot of restrictions on immigration. I believe it is quite difficult to get the paperwork straight to leave to other countries if you are Moldovan. Moldovans in some ways are trapped here. Though they can go to Ukraine and Russia freely (if I have understood correctly), but other than that I believe they need visas. Visas are in high demand, therefore the situation is difficult.

All of this leads me to a frustration am forced to explain. Moldovans, since they are so concerned on getting to other countries to make money for their home here, where 11 lei equals 1 dollar US, they often ask me how much things cost. In training we have discussed that you can just deny these sorts of things, and often I do, but sometimes I just feel like that is not solving anything. Last night for instance at dinner my host father was asking me while pointing to a loaf of bread “Chris, how much does this cost in America?” This is not an unusual situation. I sighed, and said, “three dollars.” For Moldovans they think “wow, you're so rich, here that is only 3 lei.” Or maybe they just think I'm crazy because I'm spending 33 lei on bread?

Because many Moldovans are centered upon moving to make money back home they are only concerned on how much another country's currency can do for them here in Moldova. In this situation I just mentioned with the bread I had to go on to explain, “listen, this is not crazy, the price of living in America is more expensive, and salaries are bigger there, but that doesn't mean I'm rich.” Well that is what I tried to explain, or attempted to with my language. I final response when the conversation got more complicated was direct: “Americans aren't living in Moldova.” I was not saying it in a degrading way, I just think I had to figure out a way to shift their minds away from how much a salary abroad would do for them here.

At times living here it is difficult to exchange responses with a Moldovan. Each of us volunteers have these situations everyday, and each of us has some kind of calculated and constructed responses for such situations. It is a sticky situation to be asked “hey, your country is better than ours right?” or “This is better in America right?” and when you have a complex response to explain in another language it is tough. I often finding myself explaining that I like it here more, because in some ways I honestly do. People live simply here and they know it, it is what they love. These people value family and food, and spending time with both around a table. These people have culture and traditions to follow. In many ways I wish I had such back home.

Moldova has found itself in a complicated situation right now. It is fighting its way through a lot of things both politically and economically. I believe people will continue to work abroad for some time, and stay concerned upon this until their situation begins to resolve itself. The resolution is complex, and will take some trust within their country to invest. Moldovans are a hard working people. Yes many may work abroad, and many more quite likely will, but I believe with Moldova's traditions people have something to hold onto in their country. They are a proud people. Some do stay abroad, but many also do return to live their lives here because of their traditions and family. Moldova is developing, and as it develops more returning Moldovans will have incentive to invest in businesses, organizations, and other institutions here. This all happens with trust and time.

What I'm thinking today.

2009-11-09T16:12:00.000+02:00

I went to Drochia this last weekend. It is a city pretty far north. I really like visiting other volunteers and their sites to check out their situation. I plan on visiting as many volunteers as possible while I'm here so I can leave knowing I saw the majority of Moldova.

Sadly though, the ride back almost killed me. Being slightly hung over, cramped and sweaty (nobody opens windows in Moldova, they think it will get you sick, long story), having a bit of a cold, and being in a hurry to catch the bus I didn't brush my teeth. This being after I ate eggs for breakfast left a taste in my mouth that was more than disgusting. My stomach hated me. I fought of the urge to puke. Somehow I made it out alive. When I got out of that bus I was so happy I was talking to myself for about a minute while I walked to the Peace Corps office in Chisinau mostly saying "oh my god" while breathing a bunch.

On the bright side I had a notepad with me 0n the trip and I brainstormed a lot of ideas that I could do in my village. Things are moving along within my organization as yesterday and today we have been talking about some general ideas. Things are slowly moving forward for a youth council as well. I am about to start a small photography group with kids in the high school, and so on.

The problem has been swine flu. No, not for me, but for this E. European area. There is a huge scare and I believe that two people in Moldova have been killed from it. Last week all students had the week off for Autumn holiday, and because of swine flu they all have this week off. Because of this things have been moving slower, because a lot of the things I have been working on include kids, and they're all at home!

Within my two years here I would really like to do two things generally:

1. Ignite some community involvement. This would be huge because in general people tend to worry about what is going on in their house, and as long as that is good then they are content. This stems from when communism was around - the government took care of everything, so it's understandable in some ways for them to have this mentality. On the other hand it's been 20+ years. If I can help to show the power of this to the people in my community I would be very pleased.

2. Promote community identity/pride. I think this one will be a bit easier because activities in within the community do this. I think this can be done through projects we take on and complete. I think it would be cool in the summer to put on some kinds of contests - Moldovans love certificates!

My birthday is coming up next weekend and I think I'm going to have two PC guys over. This will be nice and relaxing. We can speak in English some and I can give them the grand tour of the village if it is nice enough out.

And that is what I am thinking today.

I think I'm going to buy a turkey.

2009-11-03T10:55:00.001+02:00

Happy late Halloween and hello all, sorry that I have not written anything for awhile. I had been kind of busy around work, and then I had to go back to PST (my original host village where I had training) for more training. I was there for two weeks and did not have internet. It was really cool to go back and be able to speak much more fluently with my original host family, but I was also around my original COD group everyday so we ended up talking a lot in English and I'm worried that my language dropped some. Well actually we did have more language classes while we were there, which was nice and helpful. The good thing about the whole two weeks was that we got to hang out, talk about our lives in our villages, what we are all up to and working on. The problem with this is that we all hung out for two weeks everyday and now I'm back to my village by my lonesome and it is not the most social atmosphere, it is like starting over on accommodating to living alone. I was almost too social and now realize that that is not the regular life I will be living back at site. Over all it was a blast though!

I have been trying more seriously to just make friends. Yesterday I ran into a guy I had talked to named Slavic, and we talked and I think I'm going to buy a two liter beer and hang out with him this week. Moldovans really don't drink that much in bars in the village, or if you hang out there it is frowned upon (or this is how I have understood the situation). So, what people do is hang out at their houses. This is harder for me because I do not know very many people, and it is getting colder now, and it is weird for me to be wondering around on walks just trying to find people to talk to. Anyway the point is that I'm really trying to get as social as I can right now so that I can stay sane through this cold winter. It is getting really cold, and I hear that in the village most of the time during the winter people just hang out indoors and not much else. SO, I gotta find friends to hang out with. Foarte important.

Another thing that I might want to do is start lifting some weights so I can be tough. There is an old weight room below the liceu (high school) and I talked to a dude named Vasile who opens it up at night for people to work out. I don't know if it is very popular in the village, but if I start going and see that people like it it may be possible to find funding for more equipment as the equipment there is outdated. Also this man Vasile seems very motivated and has shown interest in teaching kids fitness. There are so many small things I think I could do, but I feel like I need to just focus on one, and push towards that goal!

ON THE BRIGHTEST OF SIDES I think that today I convinced my host parents to let me buy a turkey. Yeah, that would be sweet. My plan is to buy it around this Thanksgiving, raise it, and then eat it next Thanksgiving. I am planning on buying a male because they are bigger and look prettier with all of their feathers. I laugh every time I tell somebody, but hey, I'm pretty excited. The only thing I'm worried about is becoming friends with my turkey, and then not wanted to kill it when the time comes. Anyway, my host mom is putting the word out there for me so that I can get a good price because I think they are scump (expensive).

Also when we were done with our training we got to have a nice dinner at an Italian restuarant and we got to have some champagne and so on. We got to meet the U.S. Ambassator for Moldova. He was pretty cool until I found out that he was born in Pullman, and went to WSU (for those of you who don't know this is my rival University). He said a nice speech, and then I took this picture next to our flag. That's all for now team. Hai!

Telling time by my Brita meter

2009-10-06T10:42:00.000+03:00

The days have been scooting along quite quickly. When I arrived here I had two kittens – they're now cats, or pretty much of that size. When I think of how long ago arriving to the “Hotel Turist” on our first night it does seem like a ways back. At the same time I always feel like it is towards the end of the week. Another way I have been telling time is by the digital meter on the top of my Brita water filter. It is set for four weeks and I swear that bad boy is winding down before I know it. I think time has been moving along because I have been busy – I'll enjoy it while I can, before winter strikes.

My time has been occupied by all sorts of events. One great one about a week back is that my host dad came from Moscow. He works there and only comes back for about three to four weeks every four months. This is a typical situation for a Moldovan family as jobs are scarce in this country, and when they are found they normally do not pay much. His name is Iurie and he is pretty much the man. He has a positive attitude and a hardworking character. He is always cracking jokes and I have rarely seen him in a bad mood. The first week he came here we had a huge masa which is when there is so much food and wine that you don't know what to do with yourself. It was a blast. After most everybody left and it was just the closest of the family we hung around talking and drinking wine until the wee hours. I was a little bit hung over at breakfast and my host dad said “We washed our throats yesterday really good.” I laughed so hard and we continued to elaborate on the joke it was ridiculous.

Every Sunday our village soccer teams have matches. One weekend I got to go with them to a neighboring village to watch them play. There is the junior league, and the seniors. There I just hung out and tried to get to know the boys and men. This excursion included a rutiera ride jam packed with every boy asking me questions, most of them being inappropriate, and poking me. These kids don't know much English, but somehow every ten year old knew “mother f___er.” Being immature most of the time, I couldn't help but laugh while the littlest ten year old repeated it while we were kicking the soccer ball around. Over all it was awesome because I got my face out there and also met some other guys from my village who were about my age.

It's wine season kids and the scent is in the air. Everybody is making wine all over the village and I helped just a little bit. I wanted to help my host family but they are so hardworking that they picked all the grapes and I didn't get to help. I did get to help with the process though, which is what I really was interested in. My host dad and I one day last week pulled up a couple of barrels and I helped a little bit while we cleaned them. Three different types of grapes and put them in a barrel. There the grapes are right now as we wait for them to ferment. When it is time we will dump all the juices into another barrel and put it back in the beci (cellar), and just like that we have wine for a year. These grapes are delicious.

I went on a great walk this morning to the margins of the village. From there I went up into the hills and took some pictures. It was a beautiful day. I was glad that I brought my water bottle because I think I covered a lot of ground and became really thirsty. I really like hiking up in the hills through the woods in my village. Each time I have taken different routes to different places. I find myself desiring to discover the best angle to look down on the village, or best viewpoint. I also like seeing the other people in the village hard at work in the morning. I think a lot of people wonder what the hell I'm doing when they see me way off somewhere, but they never say anything. I'm just happy that I have been staying busy in one way or another because as of now I'm telling time by the meter on my Brita water filter.

Conversation with my host Mom

2009-09-29T15:28:00.000+03:00

Host Mom: "We only have four watermelons left Chris."

Me: “How many watermelons do you think we've eaten this summer, 40?”

HM (in high pitched, come on you're way off tone): “Nuuuu, 60 or 70!”

Me (laughing while choking on, yes, watermelon): “How many kilograms, 100?”

HM: (again, high pitched, learn how to count tone): “Nooooo, 200 kilograms or more!”

Me (grabbing my head laughing): “Jesus.”

This here is a picture of a Moldovan "beci" or cellar. People put watermelons, wine, anything else there to keep it fresh here. It is underground so it stays cold. As you can see my host family has got some watermelon. Seriously my host mom said "We're going low" when I took this picture. There's 18 there.

The idea of owning a motorcycle seems awesome, I've got a walnut tree at my house, and other things...

2009-09-22T10:12:00.001+03:00

I've had this conversation with other volunteers, but never have I wanted to ride a motorcycle, or even in a sidecar as bad as right now. When you're in the PC it is against the rules to ride motorcycles - you'll get kicked out. But dang, everybody has a motorcycle here and motorcycles just seem way cooler here. Not to mention more often than not motorcycles have some sort of sidecar that begs me to hop in. I don't plan on riding in a motorcycle in Moldova because it will get me kicked out, but when I get home I may just have to buy a motorcycle and convince fellow volunteers to do the same. We could start a ex-PC biker gang or something (one that spreads world peace and friendship of course).

I know it's been a hot summer because in the mornings I'm cold, and my 10 dollar battery operated Radio Shack digital clock with temperature read-out says 68 degrees and I feel like I'm freezing to death. Not a good sign. The winter could kill me. I think that I wish that I had brought that sleeping bag for winter. Dang, live and learn.

The jump rope I bought, sadly, was of terrible quality. The second time I used it it ripped four times by the handle and I kept having to re-tie it. I'll have to keep my eyes out for a new one of higher quality, but I don't know where I can find it. I bought this one in Chisinau in a store called SPORT, I don't know how I will find a store there with wider selection than that.

Yesterday I got 100 surveys back that we sent out to the high school. It asked 9th-12th graders to rank problems in the community, and rank what kinds of extracurricular activities (if available in their community) they like most. It also asked them if they would be willing to volunteer in their community and so on. The results leaned towards too much trash on the street and quite a spread on extracurricular activities. Yesterday and today my coworkers are busy finishing up accounting papers so I've prepared the results in excel to discuss with them tomorrow. Hopefully we can throw around some ideas brainstorming what our next steps may be!

I've been trying to talk to anybody I can in my community. It is both good practice and helps as far as connections for later. Kids are the easiest and funniest to talk to. They are also the most curious. A lot of boys have scooters (again, God I wish I had one) and they cruise around back and fourth yelling "Naroc!!" which means pretty much "what up?!" I stop them every once and awhile to see what they are up to.

Yesterday was a cool day because I got to help out four high schoolers with English. My tutor for Romanian is also the English teacher in the HS. She happens to tutor kids in English twice a week where I work so I hopped in there. We have a white board so I wrote the words down and helped with pronunciation. We then went on to translate a song my coworker had picked out - James Blunt "You're Beautiful." First of all I'll just be honest, this guy's voice is ridiculous. I was laughing half the time because the passionate lyrics mixed with his high pitched voice I could barely understand in English what was going on. Not to mention the last time I've heard the song I was probably a freshman in college. And again, these lyrics, my goodness. It was awesome though because the kids had to say what the lyrics were in English, and then write them down. Then my tutor would tell me to translate the lyrics from English to Romanian. I was a regular Moldovan speaking Romeo.

Another thing I'm really pumped about is at my house we have a huge walnut tree. I eat them all the time. You have to peel away a green layer and then you got a walnut. Crunch it on the ground and sha-bang-boom-bah. I never knew that they had this crazy green outside. Also I found out that in Romanian there isn't different names for nuts - it's nuts (terrible joke). They only have a name for peanuts, and the rest are just called nuts. Kinda crazy. I think it is similar with legs. Legs and everything on them is pretty much the same name. Legs and feet I think have the same name. Or I'm way off, I'm not quite sure.

Last weekend I headed into Chisinau for tutoring. While there there were a lot of other volunteers because there was a blues concert. There were Health volunteers there for In Service Training, and others for the concert so there were a lot of Americans. I got to hang out with a bunch of people who were also M24's and also got to see a blues which was really awesome. A good long weekend. When I got home on Sunday I think I slept for 12 hours. Which actually is something that is concerning me. I sleep so hard and so much more here than in the states. It almost freaks me out. I like staying up late by myself reading or whatever, but for some reason here I go to bed so early exhausted and I wake up like I've taken some Tylenol PM. It is crazy, I just always sleep like a rock for 10 hours every night. Yes I know I am complaining about sleeping, but still, it is concerning.

Six photos, and what's going down in my Moldovan crib.

2009-09-16T15:50:00.001+03:00

So yes I have had a little bit of free time which allowed me to play with this new photo software, but hey, I have been busy around work and the community. It is slow, but at work I am starting to transmit that we do need some kind of organizational process before we just apply for grants. It seems that people I work with right now are very eager to start a new project with youth, but they don't know what exactly, they just know that they need funding. This can lead to some frustrations for me, because I have to repeatedly explain, "yes, this is great that these grants exist, but we need to actually sit down and think of ideas for projects in our community." It is tough, but I think that people at work are realizing that they need to settle down, and take some steps backwards to analyze our situation as an organization and a community.

Right now we are looking for projects in our community that will focus on youth, particularly youth in about 9th-12th year of school. I think it will be awesome once we throw some ideas around. We are currently discussing other projects that have worked for other small villages, and have finished formulating a questionnaire for the youth today. I personally have a strong interest in teaching children photography. I think getting together some of the less fortunate children of my village and putting cameras in their hands would be amazing. Ideally I would like to have meetings with them to talk about how to use cameras, meet to discuss what photos they enjoyed, and so on. It would be an awesome way for kids in this village to express themselves. Our main goal right now is to find and develop after school activities. Children in this village are not involved in much, and typically go home after school. Right now the majority of children (and adults) are indifferent to community activities and community involvement. It is vital for us, as an institution in the community, to harness their interests so we can begin to change the mentality that "community involvement is useless." It should be a very interesting adventure.

Anyway, that's what's going on in my world. In the mean time enjoy these pictures I took, and then rendered to make look cooler or worse, you can decide.

Viaţă mea acum.

2009-09-04T14:16:00.000+03:00

Where to begin. It is Friday, and already the weekend. Last weekend happened to be a five-day weekend due to a couple of Moldovan holiday celebrations. One being the “Ziua de Independencia” and the other the “Ziua de Limba Noastra.” For those of you not living in a Romanian speaking country those holidays would be Moldova's Independence Day, and their 20 year celebration of switching from Cyrillic text, and the official language of Moldova being Romanian. For me this celebration of language included a huge concert in the heart of the capital near the monument of “Stefan cel Mare,” Steven the Great. This concert was awesome because I got to see and enjoy all of the Moldovan/Romanian Pop artists in person, this is awesome because ever since I have got here I have heard their songs blaring wherever I go. Also last weekend my youngest host sister started university in Chisinau. This leaves me with one host sister who is 22, who will be going to get her Masters degree in October. So this will leave me with a host mom. But actually, next week I will be finally meeting my host dad. He works in Moscow most of the time, and next week he is going to be coming home for a month. The funny thing is next week when he comes I will be gone for a seminar with my host partner – silly how that works out.

The equivalent of a boy band in Moldova and Romania.

After last weekend I got the chance to get back in the saddle of a regular week. This week went well in general. My host family and I are finally understanding each other, and we get along quite well. They are starting to understand my sarcastic sense of humor, which is good, because sarcasm is not so common in Moldovan culture. In the past I felt like a lot of situations were awkward, but now I think we have made a lot of progress because we don't have problems confronting one another, or asking questions. So you know, the Peace Corps gives me a salary to pay my host parents for living and for food. If I want to keep a certain amount to make your own meals everyday you can. I have opted for the “you make everything host mom” plan. This plan is pretty good, because I have found myself not too picky with the food Moldovan food. My host mom is pretty responsive to preferences I have, so I try to express myself when I like a certain meal. It is just a reality that culturally these people eat a lot of carbohydrates, and there is no getting around it. The only thing I don't really like is hard boiled eggs in the morning. Christopher's stomach is not in agreement. The only other real request I have made is that I would like some bananas, they sell them at almost any piata (market).

The summer here has been hot, and in the village I now live in I have to walk up and down a hill twice a day. It is not bad, but in the heat it will get you sweating. One of the things I really wish I would have bought and brought from America is the travel hammock I saw. It was awesome, packed small, and was affordable. This would have made the summer almost too cool though, because I could see myself reading and sleeping in one a lot. It would of made my host family think I was a joke of a human, that is, if they don't already. Summer is great though because I wear sandals everyday. Sandals are great because they don't create sock laundry, and you don't get as hot as you would in shoes. Well what comes with wearing sandals everyday is this criss-crossed tan line brought to you in part by Chaco sandals. Which, by the way volunteers in PC get 50% off their sandals, how fitting and stereotypical is that?

It is September 4th now, and I am starting to think about the winter. To be honest I'm kind of dreading it. I have never experienced a tough winter, and when I talk to other volunteers they tell me, “but you're from Washington, it gets cold there.” Then I have to explain to them how mild our winters are there, and that actually they are not that bad. Here people talk about how it gets well below zero, and we're talking about Celsius people, that's absolute zero if you have forgotten from you science text books, absolute. People tell me that I need some warm boots and I didn't bring any. I hear you can get some in the city that come fur lined, and for that reason alone I just may have to buy some. I also wish that I would have packed my sleeping bag. Next week we're going to go and buy wood for my soba. A soba is a fireplace built in the wall. I guess this fireplace heats up the wall well. The wall has tiles on it so they hold heat. I guess they do a good job of heating, or so I hear, so I think when the winter comes I will be okay indoors.

At work I have been networking as much as I can with other leaders in the community. Yesterday I met with a young guy, about two years older than myself, who is going to be a new PE teacher at the Leceul (high school). Turns out he teaches Tae-Kwon-Do to the primary school, and competes himself. He is hoping that we in our village can get a club together. He has also asked me if I want to go practice with him. I told him of course, and I look forward to it, as long as I don't get kicked in the jaw, or thrown down too hard. I have also met a lot of other figures in the community over the last month. Leaders of schools, hospitals, the mayor's office, and those who are just general community leaders without an institution.

In the office at work I have been helping with general computer problems. They usually consist of simple problems in excel. When I solve these simple tasks I usually get rewarded with a smile from my gold-toothed director, followed by “Bravo Christopher!” Two days ago I found out that all of our computers operate on a wireless network, which means I can bring my personal laptop to use there. I have a feeling that they forgot that, because a couple people I work with didn't understand how I was on the Internet. Other things I occupy my time with at work is researching community projects, brainstorming ideas for our community, and searching for small grants we can use for a couple of ideas we have in the works. It is tough right now because my partner and the director are really busy with finishing the auditing paperwork for the last three years. I have to hang tight they say, and after this we can get the ball rolling on other projects. Until then I just try to utilize my time at work as best I can.

I am pretty excited for this weekend. My host dad from my training village is turning 70 and there is going to be a masa at the house. A masa is a huge feast with accompanied wine and cognac. I really love my host family from training so am excited to spend a night there and rekindle good times. Tomorrow I'm headed to Chisinau and while I'm there I have to find him a gift. I have no idea what to get him, or how much to spend. Either way, I am sure they will be happy to see me. After this night I am probably going to meet up with some friends on Sunday in the Chisinau on the way back. It should be an awesome weekend accompanied by a lot of rutieras (tiny buses packed full of people). But for now anyway, things are developing well.

Towards the end of training we were shown a graph with vulnerability and adjustment over time, and told how in the beginning six months of PC service are a bit of a roller coaster. Right now I feel like I am on the up side, so for now I'm going to enjoy it. My future here, of course, will hold challenges where I will feel venerable, but recognizing that ahead of time will soften any falls that may occur.

A tour of my village

2009-09-02T17:14:00.000+03:00

Well I thought it would be a good idea to give a tour of the village I live in. Below are photos of some of the main sites in the village.

First off my new sponge. One of the best investments I have ever made. This little guy has an abrasive side for those places that need extra scrubbing.
This old work truck is a pretty common model in Moldova. I imagine it is pretty old, and left over from the Soviet period. This trail heads out to the fotbal field.
This is a tractor in my neighborhood. I know when it is coming because it is really loud. A lot of people work out in the fields during the summer.
A typical magazin in my village. A 'magazin' is like a corner store like a 7-11, but with wider selections. They have meats, dish soap, slippers, buckets, whatever you desire.
A corner just before the center of my village.

These are actually the grapes we are growing. I think my family will make some wine, and sell the rest. I believe that they said grapes keep well, so we will be able to eat them all winter. Yippeeeee. If you look in the center of this photograph you can see our attic.

These are my host sisters and one of thier boyfreinds. They went to Odessa, and came back with this watermelon. It weighed 9 KG, and according to my Nokia converter feature that equals: 19.84127 Pounds. I'm pretty sure I ate about 3 KG. The next day when I looked in our cellar I counted 18 more watermelons, and when my host mom saw me laughing she then told me that we were going to buy more. Like my last post stated, there are a lot of watermelons in my life.
This is one of my cats. Here he is eating a mouse that he caught. Probably pretty delicious.
These our our chickens before lunch.
And this is our chicken at lunch. Fresh.
I went to a church because one of my coworkers invited me to a wedding. The guy happend to be from Seattle, and was here with his wife from the village I live in. It is a long story and pretty complicated, but this guy from Seattle had to get baptized. In this picture they are preparing for the ritual.
This is my house. We actually have two. One is called the casa mica (small house), and the other (this one) is called the casa mare (big house). I live in the big house, and have two rooms, not exactly what I expected when I joined the PC, but I'm not complaining.
Our casa mica. In here is a dining room/living room and the kitchen.
This is where I make business.
This is inside my room. I got a lot of stuffed animals laying around, reminance of my host sisters. Some of them are kind of creepy, but this lion is pretty cool.
This is the Primiria (mayor's office) for our village.
This is a concert I went to in Anneni Noi for Moldova's Independance Day. Here is the ensamble from our village's high school.
I work in this building. In the building is the village's post office, a shoe repair place, and a place that fixes electronics. On the second floor is the NGO that I am partnered with. There there is a computer lab, meeting room, and offices. The partner organization in Sweden has funded their rent for 10 years, and the organization has access to the entire basement, and a lot of other rooms on the second floor. I feel that we need to think of some projects that can utilize all of the space that is paid for, but we will see.
This is the main street in my village. I am very lucky because it is paved really nicely as you can see, where in other villages this is not so common. I am lucky because in winter when it gets wet there supposedly is ungodly amounts of mud in Moldova. I walk up and down this hill twice a day to work.

I just ate my 134th Moldovan watermelon, and then I uploaded these pictures.

2009-08-24T11:09:00.000+03:00

If there is one thing I have learned this summer about Moldovans it is this: They love their watermelon. I have been slamming watermelon about twice a day for awhile now, and I believe it puts me at a grand total of 134 Moldovan watermelons. I have been comparing this total with the total of watermelon I have eaten in my entire life prior to coming to Moldova, and I believe I have eaten more in Moldova. Watermelon vendors are everywhere, and sometimes they are selling other melons that I don't even think we have in America. One is called 'zemos' which is yellow on the outside, and tastes like cantaloupe. Anyway, here are some pictures from my everyday life -

This is a hill I hiked up to get a different view of the village.
The woods at the top of this hill/Moldovan mountain.

A Moldovan goat in my path.

A couple of my kittens chillin out in the sun.

My host sister with our Moldovan security system.

Some turkey, they seem to be everywhere, and magically know how to get home.

One of the many types of grapes we grow at our house.

Other houses in the hillside.

Yesterday I got to show Moldovans how bad Americans are at fotbal (soccer).

2009-08-20T10:01:00.000+03:00

This is the village I live in:
Yesterday I got to play fotbol with a bunch of boys of all ages. I think I held my own for awhile, but then at one point this 10 year old kicked a goal over my head (when I was playing goalie) and then laughed at me. It was a good time, and I plan on heading back. This picture is of the field we have in my village.

First Week at Site

2009-08-17T09:40:00.000+03:00

My first week at site was a little bit stressful, but things have slowed down a bit and I have a better idea of what is to come. Throughout the week I learned a lot about my community through my partner organization. The organization I work with is just coming to an end of a big project and on Friday I had the privilege to sit in on an audit meeting. I understood a lot of what has been accomplished by my partner organization and what areas they assist the community. I am lucky that this organization is well established and they have ideas for their future.

In the past the people of Moldova were under Soviet rule, so a lot of people hold a mentality that the government will take care of anything and everything for them. This remains a problem because that carried on to people now, and they are apprehensive, or do not understand why they should get involved in their community. Through discussion with my partner and through listening during this audit on Friday I have learned that changing the mentality of the youth in the community is one of the next steps, or the next goal of my organization. I think that this is great that they can recognize this, because it presents much more sustainable opportunities. Right now I do not know exactly how we will assist in this area, but I think it will be through volunteer clubs and seminars in the community. I am really interested in getting teenagers interested in art. I think that Moldovans are in a bit of an identity crisis and if I could get kids to express what it means to them to be a Moldovan through artwork or writing that would be awesome. I think there are a couple of problems with this idea though. The first would be getting a group of kids together that are interested enough to take it seriously. The second, and hardest for me to admit is that I am not here to help with things that I want to do, but to help with things the people identify as a problem and need help with. This being said does not necessarily rule out my idea with art, I just think it is something I need to stay aware of. Last week the high school art teacher was talking with me and I am meeting him tomorrow.

On learning the language one of my bigger problems that I have been trying to avoid is sayings that we use in America because they do not translate. I am always trying to translate something I would say in English, but that does not work. For instance the other day my host sister and I had been talking for a long time after lunch and I wanted to say “what now?” while exhaling. When I said this in Romanian it just makes no sense. A lot of times this happens, so I've been avoiding such sayings. Another problem that I will just have to learn is words that are cognates with English words don't necessarily hold the same meaning. For instance the world “similar” is “similar” in Romanian, but it means “identical.” Or the word “preservative” exists in Romanian, but means “condom.” This explains why my host mom looked at me weird when she was putting vegetables in jars for winter and I asked “Are you condoming that for winter?” Oh, and “nervous” means something like pissed off, or really close to being angry. My favorite for some reason is that people when they ask each other how things are going people say “I am 'normal.'” This means that you are doing great, kind of like in America when we say “good.” “Normal” holds a much more positive connotation in Moldova, so you can't say that something went “normal” in the sense we would use it. If you say “normal” here you would use it to describe for a meal or an experience that was good. Well I'm pretty sure that this is the meaning of these words are anyway.

This Saturday I went to the capital because my dad sent me a package a while back and it finally got here. Normally mail does not take that long, but there was a huge problem in Istanbul for some reason and it took forever to get my package. The package was sent to the Peace Corps headquarters so I went there and hung out in the Volunteer lounge. It was cool to hang out with other volunteers who had been in country for over a year and had useful opinions and outlooks. It seems that time will go by quick as soon as I start getting more busy in my community.

I was wondering?

2009-08-12T11:21:00.000+03:00

If somebody sent me a post card or a package that would make me feel special. Don't send letters though, they won't make it!

Love,

Christopher

First two days of my next two years...

2009-08-10T16:36:00.000+03:00

Well I have spent a couple of nights in the village I will be in for two years. Today is my first day of 'work.' I do not know yet exactly what I will be doing, especially since I need to work on thy Romanian speaking skills.

My organization is partnered with one in Sweden, and a few months ago they got a brand new computer lab where people from the community can come and pay very little to use the Internet or play video games. The facility is very nice, and my partner is very nice as well. I feel that the most difficult part to come is actually defining my role within the organization.

Today I walked around my village with my partner and we went into the kindergarten, and primary school. There I saw the renovation projects that they were working on and the projects that they had worked on in the past. This summer my partner and another woman from my organization went to Sweden with a team of Moldovan girls for something similar to a Youth World Cup. I believe the tournament is called Gothia Cup 2009, but I am not sure yet.

I am still trying to figure out things with my host family, I have not exactly settled in yet because both them and I have been pretty busy. I have not unpacked my bags yet, and I am planning on going into town tomorrow to buy sheets and other personal items to settle in. My host mom insists that we do this tomorrow, but I feel weird asking my partner for my second day of work off. I think that it is not a big deal though, I think it is culturally different and not weird like it would be in America - or for now I am going to convince myself of this.

Also in my host family I am getting used to showering from a bucket. It is not as bad as I thought it would be - I mean I feel clean afterwards, but I think that preparing it is a hassle. I want to help out in preparing food, cleaning, and preparing the water for my 'shower,' but my host mom and sisters refuse to let me help out. So basically I get to sit back and relax, but I feel like a jerk. I guess I should just enjoy it for now because after I settle in I know that I will be doing all sorts of things on my own and won't be treated like a hotel guest.

I really need to find out more of my community if I want to succeed. I need to meet more people and make more contacts. I am stressing myself out and I have only been here for two nights and this is my first day of work. As of now things are overwhelming, but in a couple of weeks I think I will have a better - but still vague idea of what is going on in my village.

Pre Service Training coming to a close - things to come

2009-08-04T13:20:00.000+03:00

PST is coming to a close fast. I can't believe that I am heading to my host site in about a week on August 8th. Like I have mentioned before the days of PST are heavily scheduled. I think it is going to be very hard to get used to a much slower life when I arrive in my new village.

On Wednesday my collages and I had a bbq up on a hilltop. There we made a fire and roasted pork and chicken that was seasoned very well. Some of us stayed the night, but I went home late in the evening because I wanted to sleep in my bed. The bbq was great though because we had a fire, our three language teachers and we all brought a bottle of our host family's house wine. The view from the top of the hill is awesome because we can see our whole village below, as well as the neighboring village which is about three miles away. Also, from there it was great because we brought blankets and could lay and check out the stars.

One thing that we have been doing in training is practicing traditional Moldovan hora dance. This is actually kind of hard. We have lessons a few times a week. Not to mention again, in general, I'm taking dance lessons, which is ridiculous. Honestly I don't think I'm that great at it but I give it my all anyway. I feel like I'm in music class in 5th grade sometimes, but it is sweet. We have also been practicing a songs. We are going to perform both of these for our families that hosted us during training during a party. My host family for training is awesome, and I am very grateful to them for all that they do. Sometimes I will come home later than I expected and my host mom will run to the kitchen because she thinks that I am starving to death. Then she heats me up grub, it is awesome.

Furthermore to do with my host family – my host dad got back from the hospital last week. He had been in the hospital for about 25 days I believe. He seems to be in good spirits, but can't eat much since he had an operation on his stomach. My host dad is really cool, and I only wish that he would have been around longer during my training.

Because my training is coming to a close that means that I will be 'sworn in' as an actual volunteer for the U.S. Of A. After I travel to my host site I will work there for about two and a half months. After this they send us back to our training host families for two weeks to continue training. (I know that may sound confusing). But they send us back so that we can receive further training for two weeks after we have a taste of what we will be doing in our mayor's office and organization. I think this will be much more helpful, and that we will all have much more applicable questions than if we had a bunch of trainings now. I also think it will be fun to be in our original village, with our original host parents and other volunteers that we spent our first two months with. I am sure we will have a bunch of stories to tell about our village/city/new host family.

In my new host village I will have a tutor to help me with the language about 16 hours a month. This is cool, but I think I will honestly need more time. The village I will be in for two years has never had a Peace Corps Volunteer, so the community, and organization does not know what to expect from me. I also think that the transition into a village without any English speakers is going to be a challenge because right now we all have the luxury to call one another after a long day and go hang out somewhere and either vent, or discuss life in general for fun. In our new villages we will have to do this in Romanian, and also to make friends. I look forward to getting to know people in my new village, I just think I will have to be confident and outgoing when I see people in passing. I also think it will be beneficial to stay active with children by playing games in the stadium, such as frisbee. I also think I am lucky because I have host sisters who can help me get in touch with other kids around their age. But I will only be able to use them for about a month because they will be going off to Chisinau for college September 1st.

Over all I am a bit nervous on what my future will hold. I just know that I need to stay positive, focused, and motivated. I know it will be easy to lay around in my new room, rather than going out and trying to meet people. If I don't get out into my village and show my face they will not even know what it is I am doing there. I think that I will have to focus on clear communication with all people I encounter if I want to be successful, and if I get an invitation to anything I think that I should go in order to meet others. I emphasize all of these things because the COD assignment relies heavily upon networking.

I'm feeling pretty good about it all at this point. I expect there to be a lot of “high highs and low lows” while I get used to my new site and my new life. I know that my dad sent me a care package that has some black licorice in it but it still has not arrived. I am looking forward to that because it will be a nice taste of America.

A Tale and Other Stuff

2009-07-26T09:32:00.000+03:00

A good story of me using Romanian well was an excursion my host mom sent me on last week. I got home from a long day and my host mom explained by drawing a map that I needed to find a neighbor because there they have a pear tree and she wanted a sack full of pears. The map my mom drew and the landmarks were rediclious. She would explain go past a well, there is a chair, and then there is a house with a blue truck that is huge for industrial purposes. I was pumped and ready to set off. Little did she know that there are two houses with these old industrial trucks. Also she told me that the woman's house had a green gate - everybody in Moldova has a green gate.

When I thought I got to the area my treasure map indicated I went to the door and knocked. The woman I talked to was confused that there was an American with a bag. We struggled through conversation with the Moldovan security system going crazy (two dogs) in the background. This process continued for me, one house to the next until on the third I believed I was in the right place - or what one of the neighbors said was the right place. Sadly this pear woman was not home. I was bummed because I really wanted to succeed in my quest. After I went back home the pear lady called my host mom. I was off again. When I arrived there the woman felt bad, but I was in a great mood. There we picked pears and talked for about a half an hour or more. After this we sat in her kitchen and she poured me some lemonade soda.

In her kitchen we talked for a long time and we actually understood one another. This was a great breakthrough for me because I was pretty bummed early in the week about how difficult the language was. Also after I left I ran into a couple of guys my age on the street and had a conversation with them both and we understood each other. I even think I was conjigating verbs correctly - yipee. After awhile the father of these two guys wanted to get me to go and drink a bottle of wine with them - a very common offering in Moldova. I told them that I couldn't this time, but maybe another time. It is best to avoid these offerings from time to time in Moldova, because as soon as you have one taste of the wine they won't let you go until you have drank too much. You can say no, but it is a battle after they have been drinking, and for them it is likely I am the first American they have seen.

Anyway, this week was a good one. I spoke and carried a legitimate conversation. Yesterday I went to an amazing masa (huge meal with tons of food). There I tried congac for the first time, and hung around with my host mom's daughter (it was her birthday). Also this week I went to the biggest underground wine cellar in the world Milisti Mici. Underground there are barrells the size of houses and thousands and thousands of bottles. The wine was delicious and I bought a couple of bottles. On a different front my host dad is in the hospital right now, but we visited him and he seems to be doing pretty good. It is a bummer though because he has been in the hospital for three weeks (half the time I have been here). I think he will come back before I leave for my new village and be impressed with how much better I can speak Romanian. Anyway, for now I am just trying to stay positive and have as much fun as I can with the other volunteers who are near, because after we get to our real site we will not be so accessable to each other.

Oh and another big thing is the elections are Wednesday this week. I urge you to try to follow the news of what happens with it. Last time there was rioting so keep on eye on the news.

"Things Done Changed"

2009-07-10T14:40:00.000+03:00

Hey, I never get internet, but I got to an internet cafe today finally and took my jumpdrive so I could finally make a post.

Well a lot has happened since my arrival in Moldova. Upon arrival I spent two days in the capital city, Chisinau, at a hotel with the other volunteers of my group. It was all surreal in the beginning, and even more so when I arrived at a strangers home who I couldn't communicate with. I have been with my host family for three weeks or probably a little bit more by now. When I was dropped off at my host parents house I was easily the most nervous I have ever been.

Imagine me with a ton of bags in a tiny village approaching my new host parents. I happened to get assigned to an older couple, ages 69 and 66. As I carried my bags through a neighbors yard and a bunch of chickens I handed my host mother a bouquet of flowers (standard tradition in Moldova). At this point I had only had about 6 hours of language and had basically forgot any tiny pieces I had learned. As the van left I found myself stress-sweating in my new home, wondering what I had really done. My parents directed me to my new room, which is basically the fancy pants living room of the house and helped me set up my bed. My bed is basically a pull out couch futon thing. It is not the best but I really can't complain.

While we were in my new room they sat me down at a table to talk, but all I could really do was laugh nervously. I had no idea what to say and my host parents were just laughing at me and saying things in another language that I didn't understand – probably that I was blushing. I laughed with them and proceeded to the tour of my new home. My house, like almost every house in Moldova, has an extensive fruit and vegetable garden. The first couple of weeks here I spent a lot of time picking and munching on three types of cherries. They are delicious. They also make a drink called “suc” or “compot” which is boiled cherries, blueberries, or strawberries. It is like juice because after they boil the fruit (with sugar) it is really sweet and I honestly don't like it much, but I drink it anyway. My host parents have tons in their fridge and insist I drink it instead of water – it is an everyday battle to let me drink water instead.

Speaking of fridge I will touch quickly upon my amenities. I am one of the luckier ones in my village since my house has running water with a shower, and a washing machine for clothes. I do not have a toilet inside though, it is an outhouse which I'm getting used to. It is not like the ones in America though, just picture a hole in the ground.

There are twelve other volunteers in my village. Most are pretty lucky as far as amenities go like myself, but there are a few who have to bathe out of a bucket. This is very common, I think that the Peace Corps set most of us up with the richer of our village. The other volunteers in my village are really cool and we all get along great. They are of all ages. In all there are about 60 that came to Moldova at the same time as me, but we are all spread out to different villages during out Pre Service Training (PST).

PST is really exhausting. I have language class about four – five hours a day, six days a week. On the same days we have other classes related to Community Organizational Development. Longer days are pretty hard. Two days a week we travel to a bigger “HUB” city for other trainings, these days tend to be longer and more exhausting. It is in this city that I can get access to internet, diet coke, and hang out with other colleagues who are stationed in other villages. The language training is my main concern, and it is the main thing that I think about. Each day that I have studied I am pretty drained, and then I come home to my host parents who speak Romanian and Russian. My host mother is great because she used to teach Romanian so she can help me out with homework quite often. I find that the language is coming slowly, but I pick up a lot of what people are saying in discussion. The a few nights ago I talked to my parents and I found myself almost saying Romanian words.

My life is drastically different here. First of all beers are cheap (about eighty cents) for a half liter. Some days I get a couple with volunteers in my village and we talk about our day. Poverty is prevalent in my village, as it is all over in Moldova. People have been fairly welcoming. When I walk down my street I say hello to any passerby. This can go a few ways: they look at me like I'm are crazy since I'm an American in Moldova, are friendly, or barely say “good day” under their breath back. Some of us joke that we are celebrities of our village since everybody laughs and smiles at us (they are probably just making fun of us). A lot of people drink a lot of alcohol in Moldova. Men drink a lot of wine, and take pride in the wine that they have made. And the wine is good, but they do not drink wine like people drink wine in other countries. Culturally they drink wine very quickly, and continue to.

My host family serves me wine at dinner if I want it, but they are not big drinkers. My host dad will have a glass while we watch the Russian and Moldovan news during dinner. The first week I was here I was very nervous because I was not comfortable in my home, but I realize the last week I have shattered that barrier. My host dad does not wear a shirt ever, and my host mom continued to tell me to take of my shirt since it is really hot here (about 90 degrees everyday). She would explain not to be ashamed and that I needed to tan, so I finally just decided to loose the shirt at dinner and it is pretty sweet. On top of this I find myself wandering around in my underwear as if they are shorts (these things are not weird in Moldova, or at least in my house). The food here is amazing, more particularly my mom cooks up a storm every meal. When I say good I mean greasy and everything is carbs. My biggest problem that I always complain about is that my host mom feeds me too much. I know that sounds crazy but this woman will not give me a break. EVERY meal she give me more and more on my plate and I am only now figuring out how to make her stop. The first couple of weeks I would just laugh, but it is getting pretty serious, I think I'm going to come back from the Peace Corps 20 pounds heavier or something.

I find that each day I have very funny stories to tell. Just last week I was chasing one of my neighbors chickens down the dirt road in my shorts trying to explain to neighbors what was going on and if they had seen this chicken. I find that I do not have time to worry, or get anxiety about anything but learning the language. I expected that after I arrived it would be likely that I would get consumed with thoughts like “is this what I really want” but my days are so scheduled that I only am worried that I will miss a Romanian language concept.

On the Fourth of July front we had a large party in the capital city. All the PC volunteers of Moldova rented out a mini golf course and had a huge BBQ. I had a hamburger that was actually REALLY good. This party was awesome enough, but there isn't anything better than what we did afterwards. In our village we have a “House of Culture” which is now just a discotec. It was pretty crazy. There is huge dance floor playing Eastern Europe's finest music. Downstairs there are a ton of pool tables. Mostly the girls were really young so it was kind of weird, but we hung out on a balcony and with a fellow volunteer's host brother and sister who showed us the ropes.

I think it is important to share that I did catch my neighbor's run-away chicken. Times are going by quickly. Tomorrow I will find out the city/village I will spend two years in. I am pretty excited and nervous. One thing I am getting used to realizing is that as of late “things done changed.”

First update on thy travels

2009-06-11T11:21:00.000+03:00

Yo - so, as of now I am in the Istanbul airport.

The trip started from me flying into Philly, having staging for a day, then taking a bus to JFK in New York. The bus took us on an odd route right through Brooklyn which was kind of cool since I've never been anywhere near. When we arrived at JFK something pretty funny happened.

We did not have our Peace Corps passports (which are different than regular ones I guess) and we had 'team leaders' that had to pass them out when we got there along with our tickets. There were about 60 of us volunteers so you can imagine it got a little hectic for the Delta Airlines staff. Anyway, when I did get my passport/ticket it was handed to the Delta lady, and then I checked my begs, grabbed my ticket and passport and headed to security. On my way I looked down to check out my passport and I realized that whoops, this is not Christopher, this is somebody else. Not good, just checked the bags..... but it was a fellow volunteer and we cleared up the problem pretty quickly.

So here we were in JFK at 10AM, and our flight did not leave until 4PM - yucky. When it was time to board we had an 11 hour flight to Istanbul (where I am presently) and it is 11AM here now. Oh also what was awesome in New York is that I happened to throw on my Notorious B.I.G. t-shirt, and a lady just pointed at it and shook her head in aggrements which was awesome.

On my flight here my seatmate and I had some wine so I was pretty thursty upon arrival, dropping seven dollars on a water and green tea. I do not have my next flight to Moldova until 4PMish, so I have a lot of time to kill - yikes, just get me there already.

Upon arrival to Moldova I'm supposed to have all that I need in my carry on for the next three days and all I have for shoes is my sandals, so I hope that I can grab my shoes quickly from my regular baggage since it will be shipped to the Peace Corps headquarters and such. If not able to get shoes I may be in a bit of trouble, these Moldovans dress nicer than us, and wearing sandals would be disrespectful and sloppy I believe. Not the end of the world by any means though.

All of my fellow volunteers seem pretty awesome, and I have began to get closer to a few as I have spent time with them between Philadelphia and between flights.

Alright it is starting to get serious, I leave in 11 days

2009-05-29T20:10:00.000+03:00

Well I have finally began to get my things together. I bought a huge suitcase and compiled my own custom list of things that either need to be purchased or packed along the way. I will concede that being prepared does help... as much as I prefer procrastinating on things like packing.

I am starting to feel more content, and less anxiety about leaving. I think it hit me earlier than I expected, the whole idea that I am going to be gone for two years, away from my family and friends. It hit about three nights ago - the reality of it. I didn't sleep so well for a couple of nights. But as I began spending more time with my family I began to relax more... or I got used to the uncomfortable bed I've been sleeping on, haha. I also have a lot of plans with my friends, the exclamation point being Webb's cabin - which I cannot wait for. This event will be inevitably amazing.

After that is over I will scurry back to my parents place, and recheck to make sure all is packed, sleep and head to the airport. Hooray.

Some things that you (meaning my friends) should look into is Skype. I will have it on my computer, and if you email me or facebook message me I can give you my Skype user name. This way we can talk for free. That's all for now.

A few things to start...

2009-05-21T07:17:00.001+03:00

Well first off I'd like to say that I used to have a blog on wordpress.com. It was more vague, and had to do with my general interests such as reading and art. I mainly started that blog to learn how to blog, and to get myself writing while sharing some of my art. I have deleted this blog, and plan on using this as my primary blog. This blog will serve to report on how my Peace Corps experience goes in Moldova for friends and family back home.

As for now I am still at home. I am a bit nervous as the days are creeping by. Reality has began to set in. What I have realized is that there are only a few things I can really do to prepare myself, and my main duties should be to spend time with my friends and family, and make sure to do things that I enjoy in America. I just figure aside from thinking what to pack and some brief Romanian lesson learning there is not much I can do. Additionally, most anything that I won't bring I will be able to buy in Moldova, and if I can't buy it there I have a feeling that I will survive.

Those things being said I felt that I should note some important dates regarding my departure:

June 5 - 7thish - Webb's Cabin Retreat. Hang out with pals, play golf and enjoy each others company.
4:00PM make sure all my stuff is packed for flight.
June 8th - 11AM I fly to Philadelphia for Staging.
Arrive at 7:15PM, get shuttle to hotel, find fellow PC volunteers, meet, greet, and celebrate.
June 9th - Staging starts.
June 10th - Head for Moldova