Well the end just went too fast for me! I have been home for over a month already, and I never managed to write my last entry. I don’t think anyone even reads this anymore, but I am someone obsessive compulsive and need closure, so I’m writing it now.

My last month was a whirlwind of visiting friends, packing (complicated by acquiring things to bring home and giving things away), tying up loose ends, and cooking food for parties that I hosted at work, school, the club, and home. I spent as much time as possible with the people in my village, especially my host family, ate as much food as I could, and danced and sang whenever I could find the company, which was often! I also reflected on my last two years.

As one would expect, this experience has been life-changing. It was full of successes and failures, joy and despair, understanding and confusion. I was the only American in a small village where no one speaks English. I had a vague job description, few resources, and little understanding of the complex political, social, and economic forces at work in the community that I was supposed to ‘develop.’ This meant I had to adapt, to strive to understand the culture of the people who offended me on more than one occasion. I had to be a self-starter, to create my own job, figure out what needed to be done and a way to do it. I had to learn on the fly about things like project design, sustainability, measuring impact, and participatory planning. I had to learn a new language! I had to constantly ask questions, read things, and seek out information. By the end of my two years I was integrated into my community: the villagers bragged to others about how I had made myself a ‘Moldovanca’. I had worked with over 200 adults and youth on business development topics. I had inspired over 150 women to become leaders in their communities. I became fluent in Romanian, and picked up a fair amount of Russian. I gained a tremendous amount of information (and generated an equal amount of questions), leading to a decision to go to grad school for international development in the hopes of going back to make an even bigger difference.

Most importantly, I became a meaningful part of people’s lives. The night before I left my village, I finished packing up my bags and went into the two girls’ room, where I had been sleeping the last few weeks because it was attached to the fireplace (my room was not, and therefore not warm enough to sleep in once the cold set in.). My breath was taken away when I saw their wall: it was completely covered with sheets of computer paper, on which they had written: ‘Katie is the most loving, generous, talented, smart...’ and so on, until the whole wall was covered with adjectives. At the bottom they said they loved me and signed their names in a heart. I looked over at the two girls and saw tears sliding down their cheeks. I don’t think I can accurately describe the emotions I felt that night, nor can I justly sum up my experiences, so I will just stop here and say,

THANK YOU MOLDOVA!!! I will miss you and never forget you!

These last few months have been flying! After a lot of work and tracking down receipts all over the country, I successfully finished reporting for the three project funders. I also finished all of my documents and reporting for Peace Corps, and did a final evaluation with the bee kids, so basically my work here is finished. I’ll be having a few more English classes and putting together some information for the economic planning center, but that is all! Now I’m concentrating on saying goodbye and doing as many ‘Moldovan’ activities as possible. A few days after writing about the sunflower beatings, I had the opportunity to partake in it myself. I went over to my counterpart’s house with my two host sisters, and together with her and her son and husband spent about three hours hacking away at 20 huge sacks of sunflower heads. This year was really dry, so the flowers were all crunchy and kept picking my hands. But it was a fun experience, and of course afterward we were served with lots of food and drink!

A few weeks ago was hram, the village day celebration, and I was fortunate to have several guests of my own this year. Two volunteers came, and randomly, two American women (Peace Corps Malawi volunteers in the 90s) who were traveling through Moldova on bicycles and just happened to be passing through my village on the big day. So it was a great opportunity for cultural sharing. After eating and drinking a lot, we put on some tunes and taught them the hora, and then we were off to some village friends’ house for more eating and drinking. After some singing and dancing in the house, we headed off to the dance in the center of the village, and had a grand old time. I think I was a little tipsy though, and I got all sad about that being my last opportunity for a good hora, and I didn’t want to leave, and the others were all tired.... not such a good host I guess.

I finally finished the blanket that I had been knitting since March, and I went with my handicrafts teacher to give it to Enesia, the social worker who had her baby back in April. (The idea was to have the blanket finished by then...ooops). Although not perfect, it turned out pretty dang cool, and we shared a few tears when I gave it to her. Then it was fun just hanging out with her and my teacher for the afternoon and laughing and gossiping. Unfortunately I had to rush out a little bit early to go to choir practice. It was raining, and the electricians were working on the side of the road near Enesia’s house. They offered to give me a ride to practice, at the other end of the village. Their truck, however, is HUGE, and there are no steps to get up, just the tire, so I looked absolutely ridiculous, and the young workers had a good laugh at my struggles. But I got to practice on time, and dry.

I had my last appearance as a Moldovan folklore star this past Sunday. It was the annual wine festival, and folklore choirs from all of the region were invited to perform in Soroca. So we sang songs about wine and young men, including my favorite ‘badisor de pe tractor’ – the cute guy on the tractor. The host of the local cultural tv show greeted me enthusiastically as always. I’m seriously a local celebrity. ;-) Anyways, it was sad to have my last concert. I’ll be having a little party with all the ladies before I leave.

I somehow managed to make friends in the last few months. Three guys (all named Andrei) who had been working or studying elsewhere until now, moved back to the village, and they have taken care to show me a good time before I leave. Most of the time is spent drinking coffee or hot chocolate from the automatic coffee machine at the 24-hr gas station at the edge of the village, but they’ve also taken me to the candle monument in Soroca in the middle of the night, gone for a middle of the night row on a lake, ran 5k in the middle of the night to the neighboring village, danced in the park in the middle of the night, and had a middle of the night bbq. So my sleep cycle is a bit messed up, but I have really appreciated their company.

I enjoyed a visit from a former college friend and rowing teammate at the end of September. I showed her around chisinau before heading up to the village, where I gave her the village and Soroca tours. She got a traditional mamaliga dinner with my host family, and met the ‘bee lady’ when I went to get some honey at the school. She also got a taste of the three Andreis for a couple of interesting nights. It was fun to catch up with her and share my Moldovan experiences. After all, that is part of my job! My fellow volunteers have given me the prize for the most visitors over the course of our service...four family members, four friends (separately), and three random couch-surfers. I’m glad I’ve had so many opportunities to see people that I love and to show them Moldova!This past weekend I made my last fun trip to Chisinau. I took care of some business, and went to order copies of the book that I wrote as a present for my village. I spent the night with a friend from the village, who is studying in Chisinau to be a chef. She made me an incredible dinner and I got the chance to meet her roommates and hang out, which was a blast. But the biggest reason for my going to Chisinau was to gather with my fellow volunteers one last time as a group before we leave. The 21 of us M21s who remained put together a dessert bar for the Peace Corps staff, and used the time to say thank yous and goodbyes. We wandered all over Chisinau for the evening and in general enjoyed each other’s company. It is strange to think that I will probably never see over half of them again. We have been each other’s support over the past two years, and many of us have grown quite close. The first volunteers leave on October 21st and the rest of us trickle out after that up until Christmas. Ahhhh!!! 27 days for me.....

Last Saturday, Sept 12, 15 of the 21 of us who remain celebrated two years since the day we arrived in Moldova. Craaazy! We met up in a town where two volunteers live, and we just hung out together. We ate a lot, drank a little, and had tons of fun. We watched a slideshow of pictures from the past two years, and man was that a riot. There were pictures of the 19 volunteers who left early, there were pictures of things we don’t remember happening, there were pictures of great accomplishments, pictures of goofiness, and pictures that made us want to cry. It’s been a good two years.

A couple of weeks ago we had our Close of Service Conference, at which Peace Corps told us a list of ten bajillion things that we have to do before we can leave. Medical examinations, forms, reports, more forms, more reports, returning things, interviews, good bye parties, and oh, forms and reports. Plus they made us start thinking about – GASP – the future! Resumes, job applications, grad schools, etc. So anyways, I have 50 days to do all of that, plus I am planning a 19-day, 5 country trip on my way home, plus I’ve got regular work to do, and there are the usual Moldovan fall activities – village days, festivals, weddings, harvests, wine-making, etc. And I have a LOT of goodbyes to say. I carry my camera and a ‘master to-do list’ with me at all times. My official last day of service is November 6, and I’ll be home on November 25, just in time for Thanksgiving, my birthday, and the wedding of a dear friend. Up until now, I haven’t really been really thinking about the End. But now a part of me is screaming at time to slam on the breaks, and a part of me has what the Moldovans are calling ‘suitcase syndrome’ – I’ve got my ticket home, and all I can think about is leaving.

The 2009 TARE Development Course (aka, women’s empowerment camp) went pretty well. We had 62 women ages 17 to 24 over 5 days, who participated in 12 seminars on various topics relating to health, personal development, and gender roles, 3 discussions with ‘Women of Success,’ a vigil for victims of domestic violence, and a presentations by the International Organization for Migration about human trafficking and Catholic Relief Services about their work here. We also had fun activities like group games, pinatas, bracelet making, tie-dye, a bonfire with s’mores, and a talent show. The women came from all over Moldova, and when they return to their homes, they will be putting on seminars in order to share their experience and knowledge gained with the young women in their local communities. As with last year, it was a very rewarding experience because it was so tangible. We could see the young womens’ enjoyment and their change in attitude from the beginning of the week to the end of the week. The week was not without gliches. There was a sudden epidemic of getting their period and not wanting to go to lessons. The daily hot water that was promised us failed to materialize because the water pump mysteriously broke the day before we came. The camp was invaded by village boys (I was bad-cop on that one). Our main Woman of Success speaker cancelled at the last minute. And one night a key got stuck in one of the cabin doors (the upstairs level) and no one could get the door open, and the camp director didn’t want to help. So we called the DJ from the disco to come, and he climbed up a latter into the open back window and after trying in vain for an hour, he broke the front window, and the girls went in and out through the window for the remainder of the camp. But of course we handled all of these setbacks with speed, intelligence, and grace, and the camp went on wonderfully. I can’t believe it’s over. Now only the not-as-fun stuff is left – grant reports to funders, transferring the leadership to our Moldovan counterparts, and monitoring the results.

And now for a few random words on sunflower seeds. Moldovans love sunflower seeds and joke that eating them is a national sport. They have a handful in their pockets at all times. The other day I was waiting at the bus stop for a ride into Soroca, when a gas station worker from across the street walked over and into the field behind the bus stop. I thought perhaps he was going to the bathroom, but that would be weird because there is an outhouse by the gas station. A few minutes later he reappears carrying a huge sunflower head and returns to the gas station and begins eating the seeds. I guess his pocket stash ran out. The other day while running I stopped to witness a family doing a mass harvest of their sunflower seed crop. There were five of them crouched around a plastic tarp at their gate, each of them with a good-sized stick which they were using to beat the sunflower heads. The seeds fall out onto the tarp. So there was a huge pile of de-capitated sunflowers on one side of the tarp, and another pile of de-seeded heads on the other side. Interesting. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me while running.

Alrighty, I suppose that’s enough for now! Poka, poka! (bye bye!)

The summer once again flew by. After all of my visitors left, I spent a couple weeks studying for the GRE. It was hard to explain to the Moldovans why I was studying English vocabulary, but they understood that the test was important so they kept wishing me luck and telling me not to come to work but to stay home and study. At the end of July I went to Istanbul to take the test. (It is not offered in Moldova, and since I had to take it out of the country, I thought I ought to at least pick a destination to which I haven’t been yet.) I arrived at night and took the test first thing the next morning (man I’m glad to be done with that!), and then spent the next three and a half days taking in the sights. Istanbul is beautiful! I traveled around with my friend from home, Mary Linda, and we had a wonderful time. It was my first time in a Muslim country, which was interesting. We went into a few mosques, checked out the palace and the harem, smoked a water pipe (no tobacco! as I have never smoked before, that was a little tricky), and took a boat up the Bosphorus Strait to the Black Sea, where we stopped in a little fishing village on the Asian side to have lunch and hike up to the ruins of an old fortress. There is so much to see in Istanbul, and I would have loved another day or two!!

Now that all of my traveling is over, work has started to pile up. The rabbit project is going less than smoothly. My relationship with my old host family has been less than pleasant since I moved out, and now it is very difficult to continue the project as planned, since my old host mom was one of the two primary beneficiaries. Some of the rabbits died, which really stinks, since one of the main points of the project was to teach them how to raise them to not be susceptable to diseases. None of the 6 other beneficiaries have received their rabbits yet, and I’m have a hell of a time trying to track down receipts from all of the purchases to use for project reporting. Needless to say, it will be a headache trying to wrap this up before I leave. And I don’t want to just wrap it up so that I can report to the funder that we did everything we said we would, but to actually leave the project feeling like something was learned, and that these women are better off.

The bee project is going along fairly smoothly. The kids have been coming once a week all summer to take care of the hives, and the first harvest was last month. We had XX liters of honey from 3 families of bees. Before I leave, we will wrap up the business classes and make a plan for carrying on the business next year. It’s been a lot of fun to see how some of the youth have really taken responsibility and get really excited about the project.

Back in May I worked with two young entrepreneurs on putting together business plans, which were then entered in a regional competition. I helped them think about all of the things that enter into an income statement and a cash flow statement, as well as to better predict what their incomes will be. We also did a lot of research on where the best place to buy their supplies would be, as well as the marketing. Last week I was pleasantly surprised when one young girl told me that she and the other young man whom I had helped took first and second place in the regional competition! Their business plans have now been sent on to the national level, and if they place their, they will receive partial funding for their businesses.

English classes continued through the summer. Five girls showed up twice a week, and with all of my guests the past few months, they got a lot of practice speaking. I’m really quite pleased with how much they have been able to accomplish with so little time and resources.

Most of my work over the last month has been for the women’s development course. We ended up winning a grant from the Global Fund for Women, which is allowing us to do the camp as we had planned. We’ve been busy with training the counselors/instructors, signing contracts for logistical things, recruiting participants, developing activities and materials, and improving our methods of evaluation. The 5-day course starts next week, and I am so excited. We’ve got a great group of instructors this year – 10 Moldovans and 5 other peace corps volunteers. Four of the Moldovans are former participants in the TARE course, and it makes me so excited to see what TARE has done for them – the impact that they are having in their communities and the self-confidence and motivation they demonstrate in their daily lives. I can’t wait to give another 75 women this experience! Camp starts on Monday!

I went to Russia. It was awesome. My sister Anne came to Chisinau a couple of days early, and after touring around there and hanging out with other volunteers for a bit, we hopped on a plane to Moscow. My brother John arrived an hour later, from Chicago. We met up with a former Peace Corps Moldova volunteer who is now working in Russia, and he got us into the center, showed us how to get cards for the metro, took us to the apartment, helped me buy a phone card, and then took us to Red Square. Without him, all of that would have probably taken the entire four days that we had available to us!

We spent our days in Moscow mostly around the Red Square area, shopping and hiding from the rain. St. Basil’s Cathedral (the multi-colored, multi-onion-domed church that you always see in pictures) is really quite impressive, and Lenin’s masoleum is a hoot. It’s all dark in there, and he’s just laying there illuminated and stuffed, and if you pause for even a split-second while encircling his body, the Russia guards grunt at you to move along. The Kremlin is also quite impressive. I didn’t realize that it is actually a large fortress – a government compound encircled by huge red walls. We’re pretty sure we saw Medvedev or Putin race into the Kremlin in one of their sleek black cars with police escort and blocked-off roads. Inside the Kremlin walls is the world’s largest cannon that’s never been shot and the world’s largest bell that’s never been rung. Hmmm. That’s about all we saw before the skies opened up and we were forced to seek shelter.

During our walks throughout the city, I taught Anne how to read ‘the Code,’ aka, Cyrillic. It seems really complicated when you look at it, but once you know what sounds the letters make, you can sound out anything. So I would scan the buildings for words that are the same or similar in English and Russian, such as ‘Internet’ ‘Bancomat’ ‘Cosmetica’ ‘Baskin Robbins’ ‘Pizza Hut’ ‘Stop’ and ‘Sport.’ She said that once she figured it out, she didn’t feel so lost, and it is kind of like a game. After getting over his jet-lag from the first few days, John caught on too.

While we were there, Moscow was hosting the hugely popular ‘Eurovision’ song-contest, which meant there were extra tourists and Eurovision-related stuff all over. 25 European countries send an entry to the contest, which is a huge spectacle, somewhat akin to American idol. Russia won last year, so they hosted this year. This year Norway won, with some guy playing a fiddle and singing about a fairytale. While we were out and about in Moscow, we came across the entry from Denmark singing in the park outside the Kremlin. We thought they were pretty good, and happened to seem them compete in the finals on tv later in the week. They took 13th place. Moldova took 14th.

After wandering about Moscow, we took a night-train to St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg is a city like none I have ever seen before! It has canals somewhat like those in Venice or Amsterdam, and huge palace-like buildings that you might see in Paris or Vienna. It is a relatively young city, being founded by Peter I in the early 1700s. We visited the fortress out on an island which was the built to defend the land from the Swedes. (St. Petersburg is located in the western most part of Russia, across the bay from Finland). Their main street is ginormous, and lined with huge buildings and multiple cathedrals. One of the palaces belonged to the Stroganovs, where beef stroganoff was ‘invented.’ There is also the world-famous Hermitage art museum, housed in the former palace of Catherine the Great. It is truly magnificent. We also went to see a Russian ballet – the Nutcracker. The best part of the trip was probably the last evening, when we took a boat ride through the canals and out to the river. By evening, I mean night. We started out at 1:00 am (about two hours after sunset – it is on the same latitutde as Anchorage, so the long days were starting already!). Around 1:30 the four bridges across the river open up to let the tall-masted ships through. For about a mile all of the buildings along the river are illuminated, and there are crazy flashing lights on the bridges, making it a truly an incredible sight.

Overall it was a great trip, but we had a few ‘interesting’ moments. Anne was stopped by the police once for taking a picture of a street sign. She was forced to delete it. The address we were given for the place where we had to register our visas was wrong, and we were met with blank stares from non-english-speaking uniformed men. Luckily one of them recognized the name of the travel company, and explained to me how to get to the place. My limited Russian allowed me to understand ‘white door’ ’50 meters ahead’ and ‘second floor.’ I was actually quite impressed with how much I was able to get by on my Russian. I was able to buy us the ballet tickets, easily navigate the metro, negotiate with a few street vendors, ask directions for finding an atm, and chat with a random guy on the boat ride. However, my abilities didn’t do me any good with the angry babas (old women) at the hermitage museum. It was cold, so everyone had coats. But you aren’t allowed to enter with your coats, so you have to leave them at the coat check. But the coat check was full. Baba after baba just yelled ‘nyet’ and told me to go to someone else. The group check lady was empty but she wouldn’t take them because we weren’t a group. There were cupboards, but those are only for bags. Dozens of people were running around trying to find a place to leave their coats, and the babas just yelled and didn’t do anything to find a solution. After running around for 15 minutes, I started to get upset. We paid for our tickets, the musem was going to close in less then two hours, and these cranky babas wouldn’t take our dang coats. Well, John and Anne and I were standing in a tight circle, and I didn’t think anyone was paying attention to us, so I said ‘fine, I’ll leave our coats here!’ and threw them down in the middle of the floor. Well, a nice baba somehow saw it and came barging in the circle and picked them up and brushed them off and kept saying ‘nyet, nyet, nyet.’ Then she took them behind a counter and somehow found a free hook for them. Well, now I know that in Russia I just have to throw a tantrum to get something done. Later, when John went to get the jackets while Anne and I were in the bathroom, he didn’t recognize mine and Anne’s jackets and tried to tell her that these weren’t ours. But she insisted, and then re-enacted my tantrum, throwing the jackets down on the counter. Then John was like, oh, yup, those are ours.

So that was Russia. Anne and I said goodbye to John, and went our way back to Moldova, where she stayed with me for two weeks. She happened to pick two great weeks, for there was a lot of stuff going on in my village. She came with me to work most days, but it was more socializing and eating than working. There was a big party outside the town hall to celebrate 650 years since the state of Moldova was formed. There was also St. Nicholai day, so we went to a friend’s house for a dinner because her dad is named Nicholai. There were two big birthday parties, a welcome dinner for Anne, a big concert in the woods at which I sang, and a graduation/last day of school ceremony at the school. We also were invited over for dinner at a couple different places, and made a few trips to see the sights in Soroca. One day, the group that I sing with made some music videos. A crew came from the regional TV station to film us all over the village – while singing about a tractor, there was a big tractor in the back, while singing about sheep and shepherds we stood out on the hill where all the sheep are out to pasture, you get the idea. The transportation between these sites was done by one car, three trips each time. There were 24 of us, plus the driver. The car has 4 seats plus the driver. You do the math. (Ok, it’s 9 people per trip, including the driver.) We ended in the forest and had a picnic afterward. When the director/host of the show on which these videos are to air found out that I am an American, she had to have an interview, and asked me about how our folklore and their folklore differ. She was like my best friend after that. It was fun, and funny.

Everyone in my village really took to my sister. She loved the fact that no one ever thought that she looked her age (she’s quite a bit older than I). My new host family especially loved her, and we spent a lot of evenings teaching American card games to the two girls (Moldovan card games were too confusing for us). We made them a pancake breakfast one morning and a taco dinner the last evening. When the time came for her to leave, they joked about stealing her passport so that she couldn’t. The youngest girl even woke up at 5 am and came running out in her nightgown to say goodbye the morning the we left for Chisinau. I thought that two weeks was going to be a long time for her to stay in the village, but it ended up being not enough!

We spent some time with other volunteers in Chisinau before catching our bus to Brasov, Romania. Wow, I’ve been in a lot of crazy mini-bus rides, but this one takes the cake. This guy had some serious road rage, and even the Moldovans were telling him to drive a little more calmly. But fortunately we arrived in one piece nine hours later, and even managed to enjoy the scenery a bit. The border crossing was less than pleasant, since we kept getting yelled at for trying to go to the bathroom while they were checking passports and baggage and stuff. They wouldn’t let us go at all on the Moldovan side, and then on the Romanian side they were like, you should have gone in Moldova. What is this, the international no-pee zone? The bathrooms are just there to taunt us?

Anyways, we arrived in Brasov around 9pm and checked into the little guesthouse where I had stayed when I was there in September. I got to know the woman who runs it quite well, and we had been emailing each other, so I was looking forward to seeing her. We spent the next two days running all over Transylvania, hitting up all of the best Dracula/Vlad the Impaler sites. We went to a medieval walled city, Sighisoara, and saw the house where he was born. We hired a car and drove three hours into the foothills of the Fagaras mountains, where his fortress is and climbed up the 1500 steps to reach it. And we went to the tourist attraction castle at Bran, which is said to be where he lives but he actually didn’t. But it’s still a really cool castle and I would want to live there. In the evenings we explored Brasov, which I would have to say is my second-favorite city in Europe, after Vienna.

The last morning we said goodbye to the guesthouse woman, who is so awesome and gave us one night for free. She said that if I can take two years of my life to volunteer, the least she can do is give me a free night. I really appreciated that. At the train station we were hounded by a taxi driver who wanted to take us all the way to the airport in Bucuresti, which is about 80 miles away. At first we resisted, but then we added up the cost of the train tickets, and the taxi ride from the train station to the airport, and the inconvenience and wasted time, so we decided to go with him, on the conditions that he didn’t raise the price when we got to the airport, that he didn’t steal our bags, and that he didn’t drive like a maniac. He agreed to all conditions, and it ended up being awesome. We stopped in another mountain town, Sinaia, and visited the most magnificent palace I have ever seen, Peles. I liked it even better than, say, Versailles or Schonbrunn. Instead of expansive gardens, there are lush green mountains, and while it is lavish, it doesn’t go overboard. Absolutely loved it. And you can take a two-day hike over the mountains and the Bran Castle is on the other side! Anyways, our driver had special privileges and drove right up to the front, past where all the other cars had to stop. He knew everyone, and even got us into the bathroom at the restaurant that was only for customers, haha. Further along the way to the airport, he pulled over at an awesome restaurant so that Anne could eat ‘mici’ (meech), a traditional Romanian food made of meat. We chatted the whole time, and after he dropped us off at the airport, he gave us each a hug! So nice! He didn’t raise the price, but we did!

As if all this wasn’t enough, I had another visiter last week – one of my two American roommates from when I was studying in Vienna, Mandy. We went to Odessa, Ukraine, where we severely burned ourselves while laying on the beaches near the Black Sea. Odessa turned out to have a very beautiful center area, which we frequented in the evenings after having spent the days at the beach. After that Mandy spent a few days in my village as well. Needless to say, the past month and a half has absolutely flown by! I realize that I am so lucky and blessed to have the opportunity and ability to travel, to see and experience these things. I thank the Lord every day for it!

I love good weather, because it means that people are out and about. I get out to run almost every day now, and I usually go the same route, about 8 km towards another village and back. It is not a main road, it simply links the main road to this other village. There are a few large farms along the way that belong to a company that makes juice and canned fruits and vegetables. This company buses in workers from all over the region to work in the fields. Well, the bus drives by at almost the same time every day while I’m running. So now the driver always taps the horn and waves, and some of the workers on the bus have even started waving. I also feel like I know the tractor drivers who also always drive by and wave, or give me a ‘thumbs up.’ Strange, I’ve never even talked to these people, and I see them (through a window) for 5 seconds each day, yet I feel like they are my friends. ‘Oh, there goes my friend the bus driver! Oh, and here comes my friend the blue tractor driver!’

The following is a story of my walk home one day. I really enjoy such days as this, when it seems like everyone is happy and glad to talk, when I don’t have to rush, and when I feel like just another member of the village:

I was waiting on the side of the road to try to get a ride home from Soroca. My village is only about 6 km away from the city, directly on the main road to Chisinau, but it can be impossible to get there sometimes! There are two mini-bus drivers who drive between Soroca and my village every day, but there is not a regular schedule. It is not uncommon to be riding with one of them when he decides make a detour to his house to pick up a snack or something. Also, they don’t go anywhere until the bus is full. So sometimes I could spend up to an hour just sitting in the bus waiting for more people to come. Sometimes hours go by and neither of the buses come. Then you just have to hitchhike. There is a parking lot at the edge of the city, across from the bus station, and everyone wanting to go to the surrounding villages waits there to hitch rides. If a car stops, it can be a mad dash for who gets the seats.

Anyhoo, I was waiting to get a ride, and it was a beautiful day, the mini-buses were nowhere in sight, and I was tired of fighting people to get to a car first, so I decided to walk home. It’s really quite a nice walk, the first kilometer is along the Nistru River (which marks the Ukrainian border), and then there is a huuuge hill. The road does a long switchback, but there is a path straight up through the woods, which I took. Then it is another 3 kilometers up on a hill, which overlooks the city, and endless farmland. Upon reaching the edge of my village, I decided to stop in and see my friend who just had her baby. I popped in, and we caught up on the events of the past two weeks, and I admired the baby. I then headed out, because I had to be at choir practice.

I took the shortcut through the woods and met up with the main road. I ran into the friend’s 7-year-old, who was munching on some popcorn on his way home. He stopped me and made me eat some, and I promised him I would bring him candy from Russia when I went there the following week. I continued on, but soon realized the my jacket had fallen out of my bag. So I went to retrace my steps to try to find it. As I reached the entrance to the woods, I heard a friendly voice call out to me in Russian. Two young men were working on a car on the side of the road up ahead. Ah, one of them was one of the only people my age in the village. He had been working in St. Petersburg most of the time, but due to the ‘economic crisis,’ there isn’t much work there anymore, so he came home. He had given me his sim card to use while I was in Russia, and he wanted to know how my preparations for my trip were going. I struggled through a few minutes of conversing in Russian, but then switched back to Romanian and told him about my jacket. He wished me luck, and I went on through the woods. No sign of it. I couldn’t figure out where I lost it. I made it all the way back to my friend’s house, and found her, her husband, and the boy sitting in the back room. They all started laughing when I entered. ‘Looking for something?’ The asked. The boy had found it in the woods on his way home. ‘Be careful not to lose my candy on the way home from Russia!’ he told me. And I continued on my way home. As I exited from the woods, I held up my jacket to show the two guys working on the car down the road and they shouted a congratulations.

A bit further down the road I met up with a woman who was coming out of the field carrying a huge burlap sack on her back. She was wearing one of the bright, floral-patterned bathrobe-like things that all Moldovan women wear, and a bright, floral-pattered head scarf, which doesn’t at all match the bright floral-patterend bathrobe. I didn’t know her, but she seemed to know me, which isn’t uncommon, I guess. She asked me if I walked all the way from Soroca, and I said yes, it’s a nice day, why not? She replied with ‘yeah, nice to exercise a little!’

Then, on the other side of the road, going in the same direction, appeared a horse-drawn cart. It was extremely over-loading with twiggy branches sticking out in all directions, and the two watchmen from work were sitting atop the pile. ‘Katerina!’ the shouted to me. ‘Where are you coming from?’ We yelled across the road to each other for a bit, and they continued on. A bit later, they stopped to talk to someone else, and I passed them and made the turn into my part of the village. A few minutes later I heard the cart approaching from behind, so I move as far as possible to the side of the road for them to pass me. It got closer and closer, and I kept waiting for it to pass me, but it never did. Finally I turned around to see why they were going so slowly, and the horse’s head was about an inch from my shoulder! I yelped a bit and jumped into a bush, and the two watchmen were sitting atop their branches laughing their heads off. I laughed to, and then continued on.

As I walked on, I greeted people with the required ‘Christ is risen!’ (for 40 days after Easter, instead of hello). I got enthusiastic responses and smiles from all. I turned on to my old street, and the old man who lives on the corner waved from his garden. A bit further on I turned onto my new street, and another jokingly asked me if I hadn’t lost my way home. Finally, two and a half hours after setting out from the town, I arrived home, in a good mood and with just enough time to grab my notebook and make it to choir practice!

So I’m really liking my new home. My partner and the girls are very interested in my ‘gymnastics.’ That is, my body circuit exercises – jumping jacks, squats, sit-ups, push-ups, lunges, etc. I do a lot of the exercises with a large medicine ball, which they love. One evening they all came into my room and I tried to show them how to do some of the exercises. There was a lot of shrieking and stumbling and falling off of the medicine ball. In trade for the gymnastics instruction, I was instructed on how to hang up my laundry. I did a very large load the other day, and I hung them up on the clothesline in the order that they came out of the washing machine. But apparently, I have to put the pants by the pants, shirts by the shirts, etc, and in order by color. Otherwise people might walk by and think that I don’t know how to do things right. Hanging up my clothes that way never even occured to me, but now that I know, I have noticed throughout the village that everyone does it that way!

Awhile back I really got to put my language skills to use. There was a soccer game between Switzerland and Moldova (I don’t think I need to tell you the outcome) here in Chisinau. After the game a bunch of us were out at a bar where there is live music, and one of the Moldovans who works at Peace Corps plays the harmonica there. Some Swiss fans showed up, so we talked with them a bit. Lots of the Moldovans in the bar also wanted to talk with them, being so obviously foreign, dressed all in red with big swiss flags. But of course the Moldovans speak only Russian and Romanian, and the Swiss only German and English. But I speak all four! So I got to be translator. Man, that was a riot. My Russian is very poor, but I was able to facilitate a Russian-German ‘hi, how are you, where are you from, what are you doing here, how do you like Moldova, do you want a beer’ conversation! I don’t know if I’ll ever again find myself in a situation where those four languages all come into play. Crazy. Fun.

Stayed tuned for tales from my adventures with both of my siblings in Russia, and with my sister in Moldova and Romania!

The weather at last is nice! Trees are blooming, sun is shining, roads are dry, flowers are sprouting up, and there are baby rabbits, baby goats, baby sheep, baby geese, and baby people! Yes, baby people! One of my Moldovan friends, the social worker with whom I used to share an office, just had her second child, a healthy baby boy. I’ve been working (for a long time now) on knitting a blanket for him. I’ve been getting help from the home ec teacher, and I just have the border left. I hope to have it done in time for the baptism!

Work has been going along as usual – rabbits, bees, English, women’s empowerment camp, informal computer lessons, and random side projects. One of the random things I did lately was subbing for the civic education teacher for a day. She left the topic open to me, so I chose to talk about volunteersim, a relatively new concept here. The ninth-grade class was a bunch of brats, but the 7th-graders were really great. They decided that they wanted to get together a bunch of kids and clean up the cemetary before Easter of the Dead. (This is a holiday the week after regular Easter, in which families take elaborate picnics to their loved ones in the cemetary. They give gifts to the dead (usually a special round bread, a candle, and some candy), and the priest comes around and says blessings.) They asked me to help supervise, so one afternoon we met at the cemetary and picked up all the trash (sad, probably left from last year’s Easter of the Dead), trimmed hedges, hacked weeds, and fixed up benches. They worked for about 4 hours and didn’t get nearly as far as they wanted to. Well, some town council members saw what they were trying to do, and the town hall ended up paying some money to have it cleaned up for real. I was very proud of those kids for taking action and for leading others to take action!

Unfortunately, planning for the women’s empowerment camp is going less than smoothly. Peace Corps has issues with its ‘sustainability,’ and we had to spend a lot of time convincing them. Also, due to the less than wonderful state of the economy, our two major funders will not be funding us this year. Hmmmm. Well, part of our long-term strategic plan was to become as locally-financed as possible, so I guess we’ll have to switch that over to our short-term plan, haha. We are exploring different options for corporate sponsorship, as well as applying to other funder organizations. The biggest cost is of course the feeding and housing of the women during the camp. Through fellow volunteers, we may have found a campsite that we will be able to use for free and only pay a minimal price for food. We are keeping our fingers crossed that this will work out! We are also focusing a lot this year on working with our Moldovan counterparts (a young woman who was a previous counselor at the camp, and a youth development NGO in Soroca) to transfer more of the planning and implementation responsibilities over to them.

We (my local counterparts and I) also have been having problems with the local savings and loan. The new loan cycle was supposed to begin at the end of March, but because of the economy and the problems with the elections, the national bank didn’t distribute the money when it said it would. So 50 people in my village who were relying on around $1000 each in order to buy seeds to plant their crops, or to pay for weddings, or to buy animals, or what have you, have been left waiting. They were expecting the money at the end of March, and it is now the beginning of May, and they are just starting to receive it, but just a few people at a time. For those who wanted to buy seeds for planting, the time to plant has come and gone! What are they supposed to do now? People keep calling or stopping me in the road to ask when the money is going to come, and I don’t know what to tell them, since we ourselves don’t know when the bank is finally going to give it to us. I feel so bad, but I don’t know what I can do to help the situation, other than to sympathize with them and try to explain as best I can.

In other news, I recently switched host families. I decided it was time for a change, and with only 6 months left, I thought it would be good to see how another family lives. I’m now living with my counterpart and her family. The two girls (7th and 12th grade) learn English from me, and we get along great. My new host dad is one of the most talkative Moldovan men that I’ve met, and I appreciate that he’s always telling interesting facts and takes the time to translate the most important things when watching Russian television. And since I’m living with my counterpart, we’ll be able to work more often together. I’ll have to get used to new routines, new food, and different personalities again, but that’s what this adventure is all about. And it will be a lot easier this time around, since I already know the language and the family!

So next week I’ll be taking an 8-day trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg, and I can’t wait! I’ll finally get to see if all of my learning Russian efforts are going to pay off. I’ve been doing little lessons with the Russian teacher at the school, and many people in the village know that I’m going, so have been greeting me and making small talk in Russian to help me get ready. Also, these two cities are two of the main destinations for Moldovans trying to earn money abroad, so I was flooded with offers to meet up with husbands, wives, friends, neighbors, who are currently living there. I’m am armed with a cell phone sim card, and telephone numbers of these people, including a taxi driver. I also finally received my visa. I had to make two special trips into Chisinau and face the scary people at the Russian embassy in order to get it. And luckily I had help from a Moldovan friend, without whom I’m sure I would still be standing at the gate trying just to get in! Ooh, and the best part of all this is that my traveling companions will be my sister and brother!

Well, I suppose that is all for now, I wish I had an entertaining story or two, but I guess I have gotten so used to everything now, that nothing seems suprising or unusual anymore!

The weather here is ridiculous this year. Winter was too warm, barely any snow, but now it won’t warm up. The temperature hovers right around freezing, and I think I’ve seen the sun a total of 4 days in the last month. It is windy, rainy, muddy, and depressing. All of my pants have mud splashes at the bottom, and no matter how hard I try to preserve their cleanliness my boots are beyond help. Plus I have worn them so much on the rocky village roads that holes have been worn into the bottom, so if I happen to step into a puddle (every fifth step or so), my feet get soaked. Grrr. Not to mention it’s hard to run every day, as I’d like to.

But in other news, I’ve been pretty busy at site. The local savings and loan where I work gives out loans in cycles, and this month a lot of people had to make their last payments. In addition, we were collecting all requests for new loans, so that we can go to the bank in Soroca and take out one large loan. So there have been lots of people coming in and out. I’ve been busy explaining the crediting process to people, helping them fill out requests, and receiving payments on outstanding loans. With my counterpart I’ve been working on advertising the savings and loan, as well as on stream-lining the crediting process (eliminating paperwork, using the computer to make calculations, creating a database of members, etc.).

I’ve finally given in to persistent requests to start up another English group. But then it ended up being two more groups, since the age range was too large. So now I’m still going with my 7th graders that I’ve been working with for a year and a half now, as well starting from the beginning with two new groups, one of 10 5th-graders, and another of 10 students who go to high school in Soroca. It’s a lot easier with the older group!

The rabbit project is well underway now. On Sunday we took a full car-load of people down to a village near Chisinau where we purchased the first 14 rabbits (12 females and 2 males) and had a seminar. We were hoping to have purchased all the rabbits by now, but we didn’t physically receive the money in time, and now no one is selling because it’s breeding time. So in May we will purchase another 14 rabbits. In the meantime, the first two farms have been started, and we will be inseminating the females in a few weeks.

At the end of February beginning of March I spent a lot of time rehearsing with the village choir ladies. We had two performances within a short period of time, and it was kind of stressful for me, since I had to learn 8 songs within 1 week. And I didn’t even get to practice them...I heard it once, sang it once while reading the words, then went home and memorized the words, and tried to remember the melody. So I went to the concert having never actually sung some of the songs from memory. I had a bit of a freak out right before we got into the mini-bus that was to take us to the neighboring village where the concert was, but the ladies convinced me to go anyways. It turned out to be fine. We sang at the cultural activities hall, and there were about 75 people, mostly younger kids and older ladies, but a few adult men who part of a music group. It was a very casual and laid-back atmosphere, and afterward the men struck up an impromptu band and we danced a bit. Then just as we were leaving in the mini-bus (really just a large van), the 6 men in the music group crammed themselves in an started passing out chunks of bread with salami and vodka shots. Classic.

The social worker with whom I used to share an office has gone on maternity leave now. She’s due in May! I’m working on knitting a blanket for the baby, but it’s very slow going. I’m getting help from the home ec teacher at the school. I thought that it was going to be very sad at work now without her, but her replacement is another very nice lady, and we have already become quite good friends. She has already invited me over for lunch a few times, and a couple days ago I met her husband. He said he has been waiting a long time to talk to me because it is the first time he has ever talked with a ‘live’ American. So I spent about 4 hours answering all of his questions and looking at all the pictures in their house...about 500 hundred or so. And he showed me who was in each one and what the occasion was. It actually was pretty interesting when there were old black and white photos of him and his dad and grandpa in the Soviet army.

I suppose that’s about all I got for now...numai bine!

Good news – the rabbit project was funded! So now I’ll be busy with organizing technical seminars for the women, as well as working with them on marketing and tracking expenses. Right now the rabbit houses are being built, and in a few weeks we’ll be going down to a village near Chisinau to buy the rabbits. This week I’ve also got another business lesson to teach to the bee kids. The subject this time is Management, with a focus on goal-setting. Saturday I have a meeting with our new counterpart for the empowerment camp. We’re going to get them up to speed on what the camp is all about, and start with our advertising and planning for this year.

Last week I taught a budgeting/financial planning as part of a business planning seminar series in a region in the south of Moldova. The audience was about 15 40- to 50-year-old men who want to expand their rural businesses – buy tractors, build greenhouses, etc. So the audience wasn’t the usual women and youth that I’m used to, so I was a bit intimidated. I taught for two hours and we only got through half of the material. Going through the process of thinking about and calculating all of the initial costs and operating costs, and projecting income is not something that most people do. If they are looking to get funding via credit or grant, it usually goes something like this: ‘Put down 20,000 lei (Moldovan currency) for the equipment. Yeah, that sounds right. Oh, and another 10,000 for seeds. Yeah, that should do it.’ And that’s about it. There’s no researching vendors, no market research, no thinking about smaller costs that add up. Just one large estimation, which means they either end up paying interest on money they didn’t need to borrow, or they end up short and don’t have enough to get the business off the ground. So anyways, at the seminar we went through a sample budget for the construction of a greenhouse, which seemed to get them thinking, and I was able to leave lots of materials and some excel pre-formula-ed worksheets to help them in their planning.

I made my Moldovan national TV debut last Sunday. As I mentioned last month, my village choir sang at the 20th anniversary celebration of a tv show that discusses rural/agricultural issues. There were 4 musical groups from throughout the country who performed, as well as 4 famous Moldovan singers. I of course didn’t know any of them, but the ladies in my group were clearly star-struck being in their presence. We took a rutiera down to Chisinau early in the morning, and when we first got there we recorded our two songs. Then we sat around all day (seriously, like 6 hours) while they filmed the show, which consisted of important people talking about agriculture in Moldova, broken up by these cultural acts. There was the Minister of Agriculture, the mayor of Chisinau, and some other big wigs, but truth be told, I was kinda bored (and hungry). We finally went on in front of the cameras late in the afternoon, and more or less lip-synced while our recorded tracks played. I had learned our two songs to perfection by then, and being all dressed up in Moldovan national costume, you couldn’t even tell that I was an American. Good experience, but I have no desire to be a star....

While there are a lot of things here that really get on my nerves (like the horrendous customer service), I’ve had a few surprisingly pleasant experiences lately. For example, I was at the bus station in Soroca last week to buy a ticket to Chisinau ahead of time, and headed toward the ticket booth. There was a rutiera just pulling out, one that I have taken many times. The driver saw me, assumed I wanted to go to Chisinau, and sent someone out to run after me to see if I wanted him to wait. I said no thank you, but I would leaving later in the day. I was shocked – usually the case is that I come running up trying to flag one down, and they take off anyways. Another example, the driver who took me and another volunteer down south for the business planning seminar heard that we were in need of some art supplies when we got back to Chisinau. We asked him where we could find them (straws and cotton balls), and not only did he tell us, but he actually made two stops and made sure we found them before dropping us off at Peace Corps. Had we gone alone, it could have taken all day; instead, thanks to his kindness, we accomplished the mission in less than 15 minutes!

So the local grade school/middle school won a grant for a project to do activities with the students whose parents are working abroad. This week was the opening of the project, and all of the kids without parents from grades 1-9 gathered together to talk about their experiences. In a school of 250 students, 123 kids are living with grandparents, neighbors, aunts/uncles, or even alone. One 14-year-old girl hasn’t seen her parents in 13.5 years! Most of the kids say they think their parents have left them so that they can give them a better life. But in the end, they would rather have their parents home than to receive the candies, laptops, and clothes that their parents are sending them. I knew all this, but to see them all gathered there and talking about it, and realizing the true magnitude of this problem, was really heart-wrenching.

A happy event, on the other hand, was the ‘English Song Contest’ at the high school in Soroca. I and two of my colleagues were asked to be judges for this event, and it was awesome. There were 11 contestants, ranging from a quartet of girls singing ‘Sway’ to a lone young punk trying to rap to Eminem, to a girl singing Listen to Your Heart with 3 back-up dancers and two dudes who lifted her onto their shoulders during the climax of the song. Great stuff, really great stuff.

So I reported on my two thanksgivings. Well then I had 2 Christmases, 2 New Year’ses (I’ve never tried to make New Year’s plural before...), and 2 Saint’s Days. Let me just say that it’s a bit of a miracle that I’m only a little bit fat right now. The Christmases and New Year’ses were pretty standard; I spent them in the village with extended host family, which was nice and relaxed. I cooked dinner on my Christmas, and helped out with food on their Christmas. Saint Vasile Day (the last of the holidays!) was probably my favorite. I have the fortune of knowing 3 Mr. Vasiles, so I got to go to 3 celebrations. (The tradition is that if you are named after the saint whose feast day it is, you are supposed to put together a meal for your family and friends). Well Saint Vasile is the largest feast day of the year, so these celebrations were all a bit over done. Especially on the eve of the feast day, because this is also Second New Year’s. The tradition on Second New Year’s is for the high-school aged kids to go around the neighborhood dressed up in weird clothes and painted faces, yelling poems and in general just making noise. The idea is to be thankful for the harvest and the year that has passed, and to wish people well for the year that is coming. So on the eve of Saint Vasile/Second New Year’s, I started at my host dad’s brother’s; about 20 people, 3 hours of eating and drinking and (loud) singing. As soon as I got home, I walked down the path (falling down once due to the ice) to my counterpart’s house. Her husband’s name is Vasile, and she always has good parties. I’ve met most of their relatives now; they always come from other parts of Moldova for various celebrations at my counterpart’s house. There were also some neighbors that I know, and the village choir director. So I knew almost all of the 25 or so people, and it was a pretty jolly atmosphere. A few large groups of students came by to yell poems at us, so we would all push and shove to get outside and watch their merry-making. The dad of one of my English boys told me that he likes it that I run, because when I run past when they are working out in the fields, his son works harder. Hehe. So anyhoo, the next day I had barely recovered from the evening’s festivities before we were off to another Uncle Vasile and 5 more hours of eating and drinking. Whew. They tell me it’s all over now, and yes, it has been about two weeks since I’ve stuffed my face.

Since things have somewhat gotten back to normal now, I have been quite busy. We had a lot of reporting to do for Peace Corps, and my two counterparts and I had a brainstorming session to evaluate the previous year and discuss what we want to do this year. I gave my second business lesson, on entrepreneurship, for the beekeeping project. We’ve had more English lessons than usual, and I’m working on updating the English manual that we currently use, which is available to all volunteers. This week I found out that one of the girls in my class, an 8th-grader, has been in turn using her free time to teach English to some of the 4th-graders! She always surprises me with how much she goes above and beyond, and how much she manages to learn on her own. Good for her.

I’ve spent a very large amount of time lately working on a rabbit-farming project. The idea is to train 20 unemployed or under-employed village women in all aspects of rabbit farming and to provide them with a few high-quality rabbits, known for the quality and quantity of meat, in order to start their own small farms next to their homes. We will also be working with them on the business side, especially on marketing and financial management. The idea is that even small farms will be able to provide supplementary incomes, as well as give the women something to do and feel pride in. I’ll be going with host mom tomorrow to Chisinau to present the project to the grant committee and convince them that it is a good idea to fund us. I’ve also been working individually with 3 people from the village who would like to start or expand their own businesses. I’m hoping at least one of them will get off the ground. Finally, I’ve also started working with the ‘Youth Eagles’ group at school, to help them improve their volunteerism/community involvement program. Oh, and of course, there is always women’s empowerment camp stuff to do! We’re currently searching for a new Moldovan NGO to work with this year, to which we can eventually turn over the reigns of control to on all aspects of camp planning and implementation.

So the weather here is a bit ridiculous right now. While those of you back in the midwest are experiencing blistering cold and extra-normous amounts of snow, we are experiencing temps in the high 30s, even low 40s, and extra-normous amounts of mud. I have never in my life experienced a January like this one. One of my fellow volunteers joked that we should make mud-walking an official sport, with points for speed, amount of mud on shoes, and cleanliness of pants. And I’m pretty sure Romania hates me. While I was there in September to go hiking, it was too cold and we were snowed out of the mountains. Now, I had planned a trip for this week to go skiing, and it is too warm and we we will ‘mudded’ out of the mountains. Seriously?

Just for fun this month I thought I’d pass on some Moldovan superstitions (I am making no judgments on said superstitions, but simply putting them out there):

-If a girl sits at the corner of a table, she will never get married

-If you sit on the floor your ovaries (if you have them) will freeze

-If you stand in the ‘current’ you will get sick. In fact, most sickness is caused by the current

-If you forget something you can’t turn back to get it or you will have bad luck

-If someone doesn’t recognize you as you approach them, you will have a good-looking spouse

-50 grams of vodka cures anything

In other news, I’m still singing with the village choir. Rehearsals are a stitch because the 8 or so ladies are always arguing and yelling at each other and gossiping. Generally, we don’t actually start rehearsing until about 45 minutes into rehearsal, and then they start arguing again about the grammar of the song or whether there should be a pause after the second verse or not, or if we’re really going to sing that at the upcoming concert or not. I have to say that the actual singing is a bit of a challenge. This next week we’re going to Chisinau to sing at a large 20th anniversary celebration of some TV (that I’ve never seen) that broadcasts from Chisinau. We are singing two songs, neither of which I had heard before last week. But of course the 8 women know them by heart and have sung them a million times. There is of course no music, so I copied the lyrics out of one of the lady’s notebooks, listened to them sing it once to learn the melody, and then tried to sing. But it was really fast, and the vocab is rather strange so I wasn’t that familiar with it, and my tongue just got all jumbled up. I get eyed with disdain from one of the older women, but the rest just told me to shake it off. I’ll know it all just fine by Thursday. Might take a few private lessons, but I’ll get it....

Funniest thing I saw this month: at one of the many celebrations, forgot which one, there was a bowl of mini-marshmallows sitting on the table. They were left over from when I had made sweet potatoes on Christmas. My two-year-old baby cousin tried one. And then another. Nice, she likes them, but I didn’t give it much thought. Well, we turn our attention back to her two minutes later, and the entire bowl is empty, and her cheeks are stuffed with mini-marshmallows, just as if she had been playing ‘Chubby Bunny’! HAHAHA! Ok, maybe you had to see it, but trust me, it was hilarious.

The last month and a half has been pretty eventful. I suppose the biggest event was that I went home (home home) and surprised my (real) parents for thanksgiving. That’s right, they went over to Anne’s (my sister’s) for Thanksgiving dinner thinking they were going to call me, but there I was, hehe! It was awesome. I hadn’t planned on going home at all, but in September I got pretty homesick and decided I wanted to go home for Thanksgiving. But by then I had already convinced my parents that I wasn’t coming home, so I decided to make it a surprise. I did enlist the help of two brilliant agents (my brother and sister), and we successfully completed the mission. My parents didn’t have a clue. I was able to pack a lot into my 8 full days at home, and I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep on this trip. But it was wonderful to see some friends and spend so much time with my family.

Was it strange to be back? Not really. It had been 1 year, 2 months, 2 weeks, and 1 day since the last time I had been in America, but in a way it felt like I had never left. There were things I appreciated more – like good roads, streets lit at night, hearing English everywhere, taking a shower every day, drinking water from the tap, not having to build a fire to heat the house, a toilet indoors, etc. But there were things that clearly just seemed wasteful – how much energy and water we consume, how much we drive unnecessarily, how much we throw away, how unnecessarily big everything is. I knew that we are a wasteful society before I even went to Moldova, but after experiencing the two lifestyles, the contrast is striking.

The second major event of late was Thanksgiving #2. I thought it would be a good idea to cook traditional Thanksgiving food for 50 Moldovans. It was. I billed the event as my 25th Birthday/Thanksgiving/American Christmas, and invited everyone who works at the school, my extended host family, all of the people working at the town hall, my partners and their families, and some random other villagers whom I have gotten to know over the last year, as well as 7 of my volunteer friends (no way could I do this myself). So I was prepared to have almost 60 guests. I was able to find most of the ingredients at the new supermarket in Soroca, but I had planned ahead and brought back a few items from home. It took a full week of preparing – gathering all ingredients, making sure I could use the space (the school cafeteria), writing my speech, preparing the entertainment, and of course, making all the food. We had one turkey (which was brought over the morning before, killed my my host dad, plucked my friend Lauren, and gutted by my neighbor), 8 grilled chickens, 8 batches of cornbread, 2 pounds of cranberry sauce, 14 cans worth of green bean casserole, 6 large bags of stuffing, 15 bowls of jello with floating fruit, 2 gallons of gravy, 25 pounds of mashed potatoes, 5 apple pies, 4 pumpkin pies (my first attempt at making a pumpkin pie, and with a pumpkin from scratch!), candy corn and candy canes, 4 liters of vodka, 20 liters of house wine, and 24 liters of water and soda. Whew. The liked the green beans and the stuffing, were interested by the cranberries (they don’t have them here), and loved the pies. We read some Thanksgiving facts, sang Christmas carols, put up turkey hands on the wall, and told about the various foods they had never seen. We laughed, we cried, we talked about how much we like each other. I got so many flowers my room is like a green house. The Moldovans all wished me a handsome husband and healthy children. They gave me a gift wrapped in 25 sheets of newspaper. We sang some more. They were amazed at how much the American guys helped out with everything – making food, serving the food, and cleaning up afterwards. All in all, it was a successful cultural exchange, and a feel-good afternoon. And my fellow volunteers were awesome; they made food, cleaned up, ran to the store and back, sang songs without complaining, and made me look good. I couldn’t have done it without them.

I had my ‘mid-service’ crisis in October (according to my manager), and while I still am not thrilled with me work here, at least I feel appreciated. When I went to my English class for the first time after having been gone for 2 weeks at home, the kids were all waiting outside, lined up on the front steps outside the school. As I approached from around the corner, they began singing Happy Birthday! It was so nice!! And they each gave me a kiss. My friend Lauren was with me, as this was the day that we were baking all the pies for Thanksgiving, and she was very impressed by how well the kids were doing with English, so that made me proud of them too. And the 50 Moldovans I invited to the party all chipped in a bought me a pair of really nice gold earrings – they know I love earrings, and they wanted me to have a pair that will last forever so that I will always remember Moldova! Wow.

The beginning of November was pretty relaxed. I spent a lot of time fighting with Windows Movie Maker while trying to put together a 10 minute film of my experiences in Moldova to be able to share with people at home. (My father now has a copy of it if you care to watch.) I put together more information for the Xavier choir, prepared and had my first business class with the kids in the bee project, took care of a lot of logistical items for that project, worked on some TARE preliminary planning (including choosing the new directors), continued with English lessons, translated and worked on improving a grant proposal with one of my partners, and studied for and took my Romanian language exam (I’m advanced now!). As a side project I edited my Austrian friend’s 180-page thesis on international business ethics (written in English). That in a way made me glad I’m no longer in school, and in a way made me wish I were still in school. It also made me miss Vienna terribly. There was also hram (village day) in the neighboring village, the opening of Mall-dova in Chisinau (looks like a real mall, but outrageous prices -- $150 for Lees jeans??). And I finally got Natasa (host sister) to come out with a bunch of volunteers – salsa night at a club in Chisinau. A good time was had by all, and I think I will have no trouble convincing her to come out in the future! ;-) Also, I’ll be singing with the village adult choir for the Christmas season. We’ve had a few rehearsals already; the director says I sing beautifully, hehe!

Well, I wish you all a very merry and blessed Christmas season. Enjoy the time spent with your families as we celebrate Christ’s arrival!

Autumn is my favorite season. I love the crisp chilly air, the colors, the smells, the food! And in rural Moldova, there’s another whole element: the harvest. October turned out to be a beautiful month, with as much sun as there was rain in September. Everyone was out on their pieces of land, gathering their corn, or grapes, or potatoes, or whatever they had out there. Busloads of kids are taken from schools to work in the larger orchards, and everywhere you look you see horse-drawn carts stuffed with corn stalks and some dude sitting way up on top.

I’ve been spending as much time as possible outdoors, whether running or just walking around the village, trying to figure out who I could help. I spent one afternoon helping an older woman shuck her corn. She was sitting there on a little stool, with a huuuge pile of corn stalks from which she was removing the ears of corn and building smaller piles of the remaining stalks. The corn will feed the pigs in the coming year, and the stalks will go to the cows. Anyways, I had finished work early for the day, so I offered to help her out for awhile. We talked about everything, but she mostly chattered on about her family, which I didn’t mind hearing about. I admired her large pile of beautiful pumpkins in the back yard (we all know how much I love those!). After we finished for the day due to darkness, she of course invited me in for a tea, and as I was leaving she gave me the best pumpkin of the bunch! Woo hoo!

I spend another whole afternoon collecting mushrooms with one of my counterparts. We just took a pocket knife and plastic bag each and marched off into the woods across the street. The mushrooms are a big deal here. Everyone is always asking, ‘oh, did you go collect mushrooms yet?’ or, ‘I heard the Alexander Bun forest has better mushrooms than the Voloave forest!’ They are all trading recipes and methods of preserving them. It’s funny to see all these babas coming out of the forest with big bags of ‘shrooms. Anyways, my counterpart and I went aways back, since the woods had been pretty picked over already, and she showed me the difference between the good and bad mushrooms, and gave me tips on where to look. Well, I struggled at spotting them at first, because the forest floor was covered with leaves and the mushrooms blended in. But I started to get the hang of it. I had about a quarter of a bag and thought I was doing pretty good when I went over to check in with my counterpart, and she already had a whole huge bag and was well on her way with the second! Jeepers. But by the end of the day I had a whole sack, and my host ma was so proud of me when I dumped them out for her at home!

Last weekend I went with the whole host family to my host dad’s home village about 30 minutes north of my village to help his brother collect apples in his orchard. This was also a (mostly) pleasant experience. The weather was perfect, and the surrounding countryside beautiful and colorful. The orchard was about 15 rows, each a bit longer than a football field. There were 15 of us, and after a full day’s work, we managed to cover about 2/3 of it. It went like this. About 3 people per row went down one time and just picked the good apples, putting them in buckets, and then transferring them to larger sacks, which were then picked up by a man driving around the rows in a Lada. He then brought the apples to the edge of the orchard where he dumped them all in a huge pile. The second time down the row, we picked absolutely everything, even the fallen ones half-eaten by rabbits. These apples are destined for the juice factory. The work wasn’t too bad, although the weeds hadn’t been controlled, so I had so many scratches and burrs and thorns, and it was hard to find the apples that had fallen to the ground. I banged my head on branches so many times, and a lot of the time someone would just shake the tree to make the apples at the top fall, and I didn’t always hear the ‘get away’ signal and was thus bopped on the head more than once. The overall atmosphere was jolly, and of course there was food and vodka involved! At noon they spread out the food on top of the old Lada, and someone asked me, ‘I bet you don’t have this sort of uncivilized eating where you are from!’ And I said, actually we do, but we eat out of the trunk! Later in the afternoon we were busily working when all of a sudden a large chocolate cake appeared and everybody just rushed over, over-turned their buckets in between two rows, and dug in. It was pretty delicious, and welcomed.

Halloween was nice. I turned down various volunteer get-togethers for some chillaxin’ at home, and a mini party with my English kids. I told them about our trick-or-treating tradition, gave them some candy, and they came over and we carved pumpkins outside my fence. They were all pretty proud of theirs, but they all agreed that mine was the coolest, hehe. Well, since we couldn’t actually go trick-or-treating, they decided to take their lit jack-o-laterns and walk around the village scaring people. Well, I had made the mistake of singing that dumb kids song, you know the one -- ‘trick or treat, smell my feet....i’ll pull down your underwear.’ I gave them a rough translation, and then made it clear that we wouldn’t actually sing that at anyone’s house. Well, at one stop, there were a few older teenagers hanging out outside, and one of my girls, who usually is very quiet, yells out, ‘give us some candy or we’ll pull down your pants!!’ It was so incredibly hilarious, especially coming from her. Ya, I'm a real good influence on the kids over here.

Another fall event was the anual Wine Festival. There were small celebrations in each of the regional centers, and one large festival in Chisinau. A rather large number of us volunteers gathered on a gorgeous Saturday, took over an area of tables set up in the park, and just sat around talking all day, buying wine and food from the numourous exhibitioners in their booths surrounding the main square, listening to the music being played by different groups on the huge stage, moseying around the arts and crafts exhibits set up in the park, and talking with people from all over. I was ‘cheers-ing’ in about 6 different languages that day. And so we celebrated Moldova’s most prized product. Good times.

Have I done any actual work this month, you ask? Well yes, as you can see from the previous entry, we’ve finally gotten the beekeeping class up and running. I begin my business lectures in a week, so I have been preparing those. I have been preparing a bit better for my English classes, now that we have manuals that we can work with. My kids brought me apples last week, it was so cute. What else...my co-directors and I have had some strategic planning sessions for our women’s camp. I’ve been doing the occasional research/advising for various community members who have come into the office asking for information. There are a few women who would like to grow mushrooms (seems a little less risky than just going out to pick them, know what I mean?). I’ve also worked out a deal with the Xavier (my high school) choir to trade Moldovan music and culture for a little bit of financial support for the children’s music group in the village. So I’ve been busy putting together music and information for them.

I’ve also been busy adjusting to life with parents again. As I mentioned last month, my host parents returned from the Czech Repbulic, so it is a full house. I had just started to be really comfortable with my life just me and Natasha, and then all of a sudden it was like I was back to being a guest. I no longer make dinner, wash dishes, sweep, clean stuff, feed the dog, etc, because they just do it all while I’m at work. So I feel like a lazy worthless bum at home. Sometimes I manage to convince them to let me wash the dishes. And it’s strange hanging panties out on the line right in front of my host dad, ya know? And if Natasha and I want to talk girl-talk, we have to switch over to English, which is strange since we never spoke English before. But I’ll get used to it all, I suppose!

Well that’s all for this month folks, thanks for reading!

Ok, folks, my beekeeping and business project is posted on the Peace Corps website! Here is the link to my project: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=261-176. Instructions for donating and tax stuff are on the website. Anything you can help us out with would be greatly appreciated!! Even if you can't donate, you might want to take a look at the site and you can get an idea of the type of projects that I and the other 8,000 volunteers across the world are doing. Thank you!

Well, September has come and gone. I accomplished almost everything I was hoping to. We sent out the survey and informational brochure for the Economic Planning Center, and already we have seen results. Many people have come in to run ideas by us, and more people have just randomly been approaching me in the village to say hi and see what’s up. Hopefully I will find a few solid entrepreneurs to work with to really get a business going over the next year. My partner and I revised the business plan (a web design business that we had originally tried to get going in the summer) and were able to pull all the necessary materials together to submit the entire proposal to the agency running the grant program in time. Now we’re just waiting to hear if we win the money for the initial investment in the business. The fall issue of the TARE newsletter (for all past participants of the women’s empowerment camp) will be ready to go out this next week. We heard back from many of the young women from this summer’s camp who have already done seminars in their villages. A few of the girls who live in a larger village are even working to put together a monthly seminar series to share what they learned with the other women in their village. We’ve heard success stories of getting into universities or study abroad programs or starting clubs in their villages. This is of course all great news, and a point for us in the dreaded ‘sustainability’ column!

English lessons are going well so far this year. I have it down to one group of 12 students who are really committed to learning. I was able to procure some manuals for us to use this year, which I think will be a big help. The third lesson of the school year Kirk was in the village, so my kids were able to show off their skills a little bit. I was very proud of how well they were able to converse with him, and despite the long summer vacation they improved greatly from when my family was here in May. The beekeeping class is almost ready to go. That grant proposal should be approved and up on the website within the next two weeks or so, and then YOU can help us out by donating. The idea is for the students in grades 7-9 to learn business and beekeeping through a hands-on approach. They have very few options for extra-curriculars, no exposure to ideas of business until the university level, and no opportunity to learn the skill of beekeeping, which not only can be a source of income from the sale of honey and wax, but is necessary for every community that relies on agriculture as its main source of income because pollenation leads to higher crop yields. The class will meet once a week and cover all the soft and hard skills, and the kids will have responsibility for 5 families of bees, all the way from the hiving to the harvest of the honey. We need money for the procurement of the bees and equipment. The instructor, space, storage, and lecture materials will all be provided by the community. So, if you want to help make this project a reality, stay tuned to find out how you can donate!

As for the yard work...we canned 7 jars of marinated tomatoes, another 10 of marinated peppers and tomatoes, 4 of egg plant, and a million of jam. We got rid of all the tomato plants in the garden, and have two large bins of garlic and onions. So I thought we had done pretty well. Well, my host parents came home, and after one week the yard looked completely different! They got rid of all the weeds and dead plants, picked the grapes and trimmed up the vines, and cleaned out the path to the outhouse. There are now two piglets and a handful of chickens. There is also a car in the garage and a new stove/oven. I guess they were pretty successful and saving money while they were working in the Czech Republic! It’s nice that they are home, but now I’m going to have to get used to not having all of the freedom that I enjoyed while it was just me and Natasha.

Our one year celebration was a lot of fun. About 25 out of 34 of us made it to the campsite for the two days that we had festivities. I won the grill competition – melted beans and cheese on toast. Oh yeah. It was rainy and cold the entire time, but our spirits were high. We had a lot of good memories and compliments to share with each other, and encouragements to give for the coming year. I feel truly blessed to be a part of this group, because we have all bonded really well and been so supportive of each other. I definitely have some lifelong friends here. The few times that I’ve been overwhelmed by life here I was picked up so quickly by them.

I almost didn’t make it to the one-year celebration because on the morning I was supposed to leave I got locked in the outhouse. Talk about a nightmare. I mean, I was literally locked IN THE OUTHOUSE. There is a little piece of wood that spins on a nail on the outside of the outhouse, and when we are not inside we twist it so that it covers the opening and the door won’t swing open in the wind. Well....this piece of wood was getting pretty loose, and when I went in the outhouse, it swung back on it’s own into the locked position, and I couldn’t open the door from the inside!!!! I was home alone, natasha gone for work for the day and my parents still in the Czech. I could see the neighbors in the garden off aways, but they were hammering and couldn’t hear my pleas for help. I discovered that the roof could be lifted off a bit, and I tried shouting through there, but no one heard me. I tried climbing out, but there was nowhere to put my feet to hoist myself out. I tried jiggling the door, sticking rolled toilet paper through the crack, but the wood wouldn’t budge. I started to panic. What if I was in there all day?! The people at work knew I wasn’t coming in that day because I was going to Chisinau, so no one would know that I was missing until that evening. Finally I noticed that the door was made up of plastic panels surrounded by a wood frame. I forced out the top panel and stuck it through the opening and pushed open the lock!!! Genius!! I survived 20 minutes locked in the outhouse - I’m ready for anything now!

As for my vacation, it was great! Kirk got a tour of Chișinău (thoroughly covered in about 30 minutes), and we met up with a bunch of volunteers and went wine tasting at one of the larger wine cellars a bit outside of Chișinău. We spend a day picking grapes in the village where I had my training, which was a great experience. We walked up at 10 am and, in typical Moldovan fashion, were immediately given two shots of vodka and some placinte to get us going for the day of work! The weekend in my village was hram (the celebration of the village), which meant lots of eating. So we had two nights of eating and vodka, and my host parents were back from abroad, so there was extra hoopla at my house. By the end of the evening, I was selectively translationg what was being said. ;) Unfortunately the town dance was cancelled because of all the rain we’d been having.

After 5 days in Moldova, we headed out to Romania for what we hoped would be some good trekking. But unfortunately the weather was not on our side, and we only got in about 2 days. Dracula’s castle in Transylvania was a rather large disappointment, and we had a few mishaps along the way, but overall it was still a fun trip. We went out to the Black Sea for a day, and wandered around Buchareșt, and for my sake, we spent a day at the mall, bowling, and the movies. And I went to Pizza Hut three times. We met some awesome people throughout the travels, which I always think of as the best part of any trip. One nice man drove us all the way from the mountains back into the center of Brasov and told us the real story of Dracula (or Vlad the Impaler). An 83-year old energetic man led us to a trail head one day, and he told us how he walks every day and climbs the hill 3 days a week. We stayed in the guesthouse of one really nice woman who spoke German and let me borrow her personal shampoo. Another nice young man let me use the internet on his phone to try to find a hostel while we were on the train to Buchareșt (there was something fishy about how he was obtaining this service though...). A waiter at a mountain cafe pleasantly informed us that the cabana we had been searching for had actually burned down 6 years ago. Two older gentlemen on the bus back from the airport kept me company and made me feel better when I was homesick and sad about parting from my friend. A nice girl saved us from getting fines for not punching our bus tickets (we tried, really we did, it was confusing.) And so on. The world is full of great people, and someone always seems to come along at just the right moment to say the right thing, or just to put a smile on your face. :)

To me, smiles, laughter, and hugs are three of the greatest things in life. And luckily, they are (mostly) universal!

I’m not really sure what happened to summer. One minute it was here, and then it was gone. Unfortunately, after writing about all the cool stuff that was finally happening, I managed to get myself invalid status for two weeks. At the last baseball game I got drilled in the leg near my inside ankle really hard. Twice. I’ve been hit with a baseball before, and yeah, it stings, but no big deal, right? So I went back to site thinking it would pass. Well, by the end of the week, it looked like I had elephantitus of the foot, there was a huge elevated lump on my shin, and it was completely blue all the way down to my toes (luckily I had painted my toenails purple, so it matched). I also could barely walk. I had a rather pleasant Friday giving seminars to 12 girls in a fellow volunteer’s village, but I was on my feet the whole day, and by then I realized I needed to do something about this. It’s not a good sign when everybody has a look of horror on their faces after looking at my leg. So I went in to our doctor at Peace Corps, who had me get an x-ray. Not broken, no hairline fracture like I feared. Ok, so then we go to the ‘traumatologist’ at the local hospital (dark and scary!). His immediate response was ‘cut it open and let it drain out.’ I wasn’t so thrilled with that, so we settled on extracting the extra fluid with a syringe. So we did the ‘procedure’ back at Peace Corps (they proudly showed me all of the black goop they took out), and I began two weeks of sitting with my leg elevated and daily electro-therapy treatments. At the end of the two weeks, our doctor stabbed me again and took out the remaining fluid. By now my foot had returned to its normal size and color, and it no longer hurt to walk. Crisis over. But do you have any idea how hard it was for me to sit around for 2 weeks?! Peace Corps has an apartment next to our office in the capital where all of the volunteers stay for free if we are sick, or if we have to come in for a medical appointment and can’t make it back to our site in the same day. I managed to avoid this place for more than 11 months, and then wham! – 13 nights. The upside is that it is the nicest apartment I’ve seen in Moldova, located right above a convenience store, and there is usually at least one other sick person each night to play movie trivia, watch movies, or do puzzles with. I did as much work as I could without actually being at site, so that occupied me for about a day. For the first week I was able to watch the Olympics from 8-noon everyday on NBC, which we get in the volunteer lounge. I also watched 13 movies and 12 episodes of Saved by the Bell, read 3 books, and did most of a 1000 piece puzzle, and wrote a lot of emails. Conveniently, we also had a two-day language training during this time, so my whole group was in town for a few nights. But I obviously couldn’t run, or work out really at all, or do anything worthwhile. I felt like a lazy, worthless, blob.

Last week a supermarket opened in Soroca. A real one. Not huge, but enough that I felt like I was walking into Rainbow, or Copps. Now I don’t have to go to Chișinău to get my grocery store experience. However, we volunteers have been talking about the fact that we are here to help small business development, but then we are super excited any time we get to go to a large chain grocery store. This new store will definitely have its effects on the farmers and mom-and-pop convenience stores in my region. I was expecting a reaction to the opening of this store somewhat comparable to some of the Wal-mart protesting. However, so far I’ve only heard wonder and awe on the part of the Moldovan people. They are amazed at the space – not having to move through a throng of people and being bumped and pushed from all sides like at the piața. They love that you can pick everything off of the shelves yourself and see everything clearly and read the labels, without a salesperson having to get it from behind a counter or pressuring you to hurry up, as happens in the small convenience stores. They are amazed at the variety of options, the pre-cut, de-fatted and de-boned meat, the semi-prepared packaged food, the fruits and veggies out of season, the fact that you can absolutely everything you need in one place. They were pleasantly surprised that prices were comparable, or in many cases even lower than at the piața or in the convenience stores. And of course there is the lure of the fact that it is inside, which means they don’t have to go to the outdoor piața if it is raining, too hot, or too cold. A less tangible benefit is the pride or higher standard of living that it gives people. “See Kate?’ they tell me, ‘we are becoming civilized too!’

But what does this mean for the small guy? Those hundreds of people who sell their produce at the piața, or who own the smaller convenience stores? Some of them will make it, but certainly not all of them. And for many of them, that is absolutely all they have for income! What will they do? Sure, this new supermarket will provide jobs to maybe 100 people, but hundreds more will lose out. Not to mention the fact that the supermarket is of course foreign-owned, meaning that the profits are flowing right on out of the country. Unfortunately, such is the reality of globalization. What the solution is, I have yet discover. And should I feel guilty for enjoying the fact that I can go to the supermarket this winter and buy avocados instead of getting cabbage at the piața? I feel like I’m back in junior religion class when Mr. Mauthe convincingly argued that it was a sin to eat at a restaurant....

On a happier and less complicated topic, September 1 was the first day of school here, and coincidentally, my first day back to work after my two-week foot debacle. It was a great day, one that made me glad to be here. I started by going to the opening ceremonies at school. The whole gang from the mayor’s office was there, and they were all thrilled to see me, going on about how much they missed me, that it was a different feel without me around, what are they going to do when I leave for good next year, etc. (Do you see my head inflating?) And then some of my English kids caught sight of me and came running over. I had been hiding in the back of the crowd, but all of a sudden I was a crowd. I had decided that this year I only wanted to work with the 6 students who I knew were actually learning and studying the language each week last year. I am not here to teach, and I don’t really know how, and I don’t want to spend my time teaching them the same words, and dealing with a classroom of rowdy kids, when I could be helping those few who really could learn something over the next year. To be honest, I’m not really sure why there are so many who kept on coming last year, and who want to keep coming this year. Surely the novelty of the American has worn off? So anyways, the point is, I had decided that I only wanted to take 6 kids this year, but then no less than 20 were so excited that classes would start up again and kept asking me when. And there were more parents who were asking me to take their kids this year because they had learned a bit of English in Moscow, or in Balti or where-have-you. And seeing the excitement and enthusiasm on their faces, I couldn’t say no! So we’ll see. First class is Friday, and I’ll be laying down ground rules for this year. So anyways, the kids and I stood in the back of the crowd, giggling and talking about this at that, while the priest was up there blessing everything in sight and spraying holy water. After the ceremony, most of the teachers came up and said hello, asked about my foot, said they were looking forward to this or that thing that I was going to help them with in the near future. And so on throughout the day. Whenever I was walking anywhere, I ran into people I hadn’t seen for weeks, and so I would stop to talk for longer than usual. The day was really an ego-booster. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t done anything for two weeks, they were just glad to see me. I also just like being back in the village, where everyone greets each other. I called out a greeting to a baba (an older woman) pulling water from a well, and she turned around so quickly with a smile, eager to return the greeting to whomever had greeted her. I called out a ‘Lord help you!’ to a man working in his garden, and he gave me an appreciative thank you, a big smile, and a wave. Home sweet home.

So not only did summer fly by, but September already has a full agenda. My counterparts and I have created a survey and an informational brochure for the Economic Planning Center that we run. It will go out to all the families in the two villages that make up our community. We want to make them more aware of the services we offer, as well as to get an idea of what kind of projects and services they would be most interested in. So that needs to get out within the next week (the logistics of printing, copying, and distributing have been more time consuming than the actual creation of the materials!). I also have the next issue of the TARE newsletter to work on, the beekeeping class to get up and running, and English lessons and materials to prepare. We are also revising the business plan I mentioned in my last entry in order to submit it for a different grant program. In addition to that, there still is some canning to do, the garden needs to be cleaned up, and the grapes need to be picked and the wine made (that can take a week itself). Also, hram, the annual day of the village is on the 21st, and that involves a lot of cleaning and food preparation, many guests, and in general, craziness. AND, September 12th marks exactly one year since arrival in country, so our entire group (or rather, the 34 of us who remain) is spending a few days together to celebrate. Woo hoo! Oh, and on the 18th I receive my first non-family visitor! Kirk is coming to check out Moldovan life for a few days, and then we’re hitting the mountains in Romania for a week at the end of the month. Woo hoo again! So I guess I’ll have a lot to write about next month!

Well, Camp TARE (the women’s empowerment camp I’ve been talking about) was a success. In Romanian ‘Tare’ means ‘strong.’ And as an acronym, it stands for ‘Tinere (young), Active, Responsabile, Egale (equal). The camp took place July 1-6 in Soroca, the city nearest my village (convenient for me!), and there were 71 young women ages 18-22 from all over Moldova. The theme of this year’s camp was ‘My Dream Can Be Reality,’ and throughout the course of the week the participants went to 15 seminars, with topics ranging from career development to breast cancer. The seminars were taught by teams typically consisting of one Moldovan and one Peace Corps volunteer. (We had 10 PCVs and 8 Moldovan counselors.) In addition to the seminars, we had activities that most girls had never even heard of before, such as pinatas, tie-dye, a bonfire with s’mores, and various art projects. We also had a candlelight vigil for domestic violence, and a guest presentation on human trafficking. As a director, it was so rewarding to see all of our work over the past 5 months to come to fruition. It was incredible to watch these girls grow over the course of the week, and to leave with new friendships, new ideas, new knowledge, and new attitudes. I spent the week acting as a liaison with the campsite director, trouble-shooting any problems, keeping track of expenses, and in general making sure things ran smoothly. The four of us directors were typically the first ones up and the last ones to bed. In addition to the above mentioned duties, I also taught 4 sessions of the community development seminar, and 2 sessions of self-defense, and I led a running group bright and early every morning.

My favorite evening of the whole camp was probably the 4th of July. We had a bonfire and the 14 of us Americans sang patriotic songs and waved around tiny little American flags. We went down to the river and shot off fireworks, which were actually impressive (or maybe I’ve just been here too long). Then the part that brought tears to my eyes – after we sang our national anthem, the 79 Moldovans sang their national anthem. I had never heard it sung before, and you could see how much pride these young women had for their country, and it just made me want to burst. This country needs more young people who love their country and want to improve it.

The final night of the camp the girls organized a talent show, which was awesome. They ended it by crushing the 4 of us directors in a 94 person group hug, which again made me want to cry. At that moment I felt like I had really done something to make a difference. I had that ‘aha!’ moment, that this was why I had joined Peace Corps. And the TARE love doesn’t stop there. Each girl received a 150-page manual (which I diligently worked on through-out the spring – it was great to see our work in published form!) with information for all the seminars as well as sample lesson plans. The hope is that when the girls go back to their villages, they will each do a seminar there, thus further spreading the information that we gave them. Also, this year we are starting up a newsletter to keep giving the young women information and support, and to celebrate their successes. The first issue went out today! Woo hoo!

So, back in my village things have also started to heat up. I spent two weeks working long days to put together a proposal for a grant sponsored by UNDP. The idea is for NGOs to start up small businesses, from which the profits will be used as a source of funding for the ongoing activities of the NGO. So we had to put together a detailed business plan in addition to other information about the NGO. Well, just so happens this is right up my alley, and exactly why I came here! My Moldovan counterpart is the director of the children’s summer camp for our region, so she literally lives at the camp, which is across the street from our village. So everyday I hiked over there, and we worked on the computer she had hauled up to the top of the A-frame cabin were she lives. We talked about things like the target market, the pricing, the financial projections, the management and operations, and in general how to clearly and concisely write up a business plan. It was nice that everything had to be done in Romanian, because then she and her son, who will be the main employee, really did have to write it, and I played the advisor/Excel-goddess role. The week before the proposal was due, however, oh boy, did the rains come! 6 days in a row it rained without stopping, and the power kept going on and off. So it was quite frustrating to be working and having the computer keep turning off. Not to mention I felt like I was permanently wet. But we finished. And I had another this-is-why-I-joined-Peace-Corps moment. One night, my counterpart turned to me and said, ‘Kate, even if we don’t win this grant, I’m so glad we did this. I can’t even tell you how much I’ve learned from you in the last two weeks.’ Then she went on to say that she plans on quitting one of her 4 jobs so that she can spend more time at the NGO and work together more with me. Woo hoo!

Let’s see what else. I’ve also been working on the grant proposal for the beekeeping class that she will be teaching starting this fall. The bee lady lives in the neighboring village, about a 30 minute walk. One day during the week of the rains, I went over to her house to work with her. I waited until it was just a light rain, and then set out down the hill. But of course the skies opened up, and by the time I got to her house I was drenched. I spent the entire afternoon sitting in her house in my underwear. But we accomplished a lot, so I guess it was worth it. Plus I of course got home made sheep cheese, some honey-vodka, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden, and some honeycomb. Woo hoo!

As for the rains, wow! I’ve never seen anything like this before. The beach where we hung out after the camp – completely gone. The river near Soroca swelled to 3x its normal width, and the water level reached almost to the top of the retaining walls built exactly in case this happens. It was creepy to look at the now huge rushing river. The bus station in Soroca flooded and the road into town from my village closed. In other places people lost their homes. Also, here’s a geography lesson for you. The borders of Moldova are the River Prut on the west, with Romania on the other side, and the River Nistru on the east, with Ukraine on the other side. Funny, several different news sources reported disastrous flooding in Ukraine and Romania due to the overflowing of the Nistru and Prut rivers. But in Moldova, so it seems, nothing happend. What, the rivers only overflowed on one side? Or it’s not disastrous if Moldova floods, just Romania and Ukraine? Boo!

I have now discovered the allure of living in a village. Beyond the fact that you can walk everyone, and everyone knows everyone, and there is beautiful countryside all around, there is the over-crowded and diversly-sowed garden that is requisite for any up-standing Moldovan household. Being that my host parents are abroad, the upkeep of said garden has fallen under the responsibility of two delightful and ‘TARE’ women in their mid 20s, that is, me and my host sister. In one plot of land a bit larger than your typical basketball court, we have onions, garlic, carrots, potatoes, cabbage, green peppers, six different kinds of grapes, strawberries, cherries, apples, and numerous beautiful flowers. So every night I go out and pick some tomatoes, or pull an onion out of the ground, and make some dinner. We sometimes go out to weed, or water, or tie up the tomatoes or grapevines that are being weighed down, or whatever needs to be done. There is enough of everything except the potatoes to be canned and last through the winter. Some of it will be pickled (not a fan), some of it will be marinated (so-so), and some of it combined into a delished pickled/marinated salad (am a fan). And there will be enough grapes to make 500 liters of wine, which will hopefully last until next year’s harvest. (Good thing harvest is coming soon, because we’re almost out of the stuff from last year!) And on top of that, we have also gone over to the relatives, who have a much bigger plot of land, and collected berries. With the goods we made many jars of both raspberry and currant jam. Mmmm. The raspberries – oh my! One day I just sat in the raspberry patch and ate until I couldn’t eat any more. Then I grabbed a few apricots off the tree on the way out to eat later. Oh, and then I made a really AWEsome raspberry pie with homemade crust and everything. Woo hoo!

Oh, and my dog had four adorable little puppies! I get to keep one! Woo hoo!

One time, the four of us camp directors were waiting on a rutiera in Bălți (the second largest city in Moldova, in the north). It is not uncommon for beggers, often little girls, to come on the rutiera and ask for money. We were in the back row, and one girl came up and just stood in front of us for like 5 minutes, which is like an eternity. Finally I gave her two 1 leu bills in the hopes that she would go away. She backed up a bit and pulled out a huge wad of money and started flashing it around! So my colleague turns to me and says, ‘sucker!’ We all kind of chuckeled and said, ya, I’m a sucka! Then the girl looks and me and goes, ‘sucka sucka sucka!,’ laughs, and dashes off the rutiera! Nice.

Summer is here, things are really starting to grow, and I’m starting to realize just how ignorant I am about agriculture, and where my food comes from. I have no idea what fruits and vegetables look like when they are planted, and I feel stupid that I have to ask. ‘Duh Kate, those are carrots!’ Of course. And the trees! I didn’t know that peach trees have beautiful pink blossoms! Now that my host mom is working abroad with her husband (they have both been in the Czech Republic since the beginning of May), it is just me and my sister at home, taking care of the garden and the land on the outskirts of the village, so I’ve gotten my hands dirty once or twice. The first time I had to be told which were the weeds and which are the parsley. We Americans just buy everything at the supermarket and don’t even stop to think or question where our food came from. Now I can at least say that I know a little bit.

I love that I can just walk out my door and pick cherries off the tree or strawberries from the bushes. I had a great evening strolling around my partner’s huge garden with her daughter, stopping at every tree and just eating fruit until my belly was about to burst. I ate cherries (I climbed up in the tree to reach the best ones!), sour cherries, raspberries, strawberries, currants, and some weird yellow berry that I can’t even describe. It was glorious. Oh, and I ate peas and liked them!!! Picked ‘em right out of the pods that had been given to me by a neighbor as I was passing by on my way to work one day.

I also had a fabulous day harvesting honey at the bee lady’s house. (She’s also the one I helped with the sheep project back in February.) I walked over to her village with the crocheting and music teacher (who is always good for laughs), and together with the bee lady’s husband and two sons, we spun out about 140 frames of honey. The six of us were crammed in one little hot shed, working hard all afternoon, sweaty and sticky, but the end result was a huuuuge barrel of honey. And then of course we sat down and ate it with sheep cheese and homemade wine. Moldova rocks sometimes. But then I started talked to the grandpa, and we were discussing how no one can make a decent wage, and all of the young people are leaving, and then he started to cry! He said it just isn’t fair that he worked hard his whole life and is 80 years old and still has to look for extra sources of income because he can’t live off of his pension (not to mention the only option for saving for retirement is putting cash under the matress). And that his grandchildren can’t find well-paying jobs here and everyone’s families are torn apart because people leave and leave their children behind. Seeing this man cry was one of the most heart-wrenching moments I’ve experienced so far in Moldova. Something definitely needs to change here.

As far as my work is concerned, things are picking up. My partners and I have several ideas for big projects we would like to start working on. All the volunteers and their partners went to a 3-day project design and management workshop put on by Peace Corps back in May, so we have a better idea of how to approach things. My English kids want to continue through the summer, but less frequently. I’m working with the kindergarten still, to get them much needed education games and toys for physcial activity. I’d like to put together some kind of financial planning/cost benefit anaylsis seminar to address the problem that people never look farther ahead than the next 9 months or so. Also, a woman in the community (the bee lady) wants to teach an optional class in beekeeping at the school, and I might join her to teach business skills, kind of like a Junior Achievement course. And one of my two partners is the director of the regional rest camp, located right across the street from our village, so I’ve been called over to attend opening ceremonies, judge beauty pageants, and teach the kids American games. The first week she tells me, ‘it would be nice if you can come tomorrow to teach the kids some games.’ I said, ‘ok, what time?’ She says, ‘5:00. You have a stage, 250 kids ages 8 to 18, and one hour.’ I was like, oh geez, how in the heck do I plan for that? Luckily I was able to call in my trusty fellow volunteer from Soroca, and we did a bunch of relay race games (bat spin anyone?!).

Things are really getting going for our women’s camp. Lucky for me, the location was changed to Soroca, so it’s convenient. But that means I have to keep going to there to meet with the camp director, bring supplies, draw maps, scout out bus schedules, etc. We’ve also been very busy dealing with a minor budget crisis, due to the location change (the new place is more expensive), which also increased transportation costs since it’s farther away from the center (not to mention rising gas prices). And the dollar lost 8% since we submitted our grants two months ago (the grants were dollar-denominated, and we receive the money this week at the current exchange rate). Luckily we were able to come up with last minute donations, and the camp will go on! So many of my nights and weekends have been occupied with planning for this camp over the last 4 months, so it better be good!

So a few more notes about the rutieras. It’s really a love/hate relationship. The other day I went to Bălți, to do some shopping for our camp. It’s about an hour and a half rutiera ride away, but I clearly got on the rutiera from h-e-double-hockey-sticks. Since I hopped on in my village instead of the beginning of the route in Soroca, I had to stand. Usually this isn’t a problem because seats will open up as people get off in villages along the way. Unfortunately, hardly anyone got off, and more people kept getting on. And people have no regard for others whatsoever. No one moves back to make room, people who are sitting leave their huge bags in the aisles, people stop to smoke and then squish back in right next to me, there’s a bag with dead chickens in it, etc. My body was contorted at a weird angle to support myself among the throng of people. I wanted to throw-up from the jerkiness of the driving because of the severely pot-holed roads, and I wanted to pass out from the heat. And they yell if you open in the window for some air because the current will make everyone sick. No, actually that is precious airflow that will stop you from dying of heat exhaustion. I won’t even start on the smell...

But why I love the rutieras is this – it also doubles as a super express postal service! Yes, you can stop a rutiera, hand him a package, and for a small fee (50 cents - $2, depending on the package, obscureness of the drop-off location, and your negotiating skills) he will deliver it for you within the next few hours! As long as the package’s destination is along his route, it’s pretty much a sure deal. It’s remarkable. I once was in Ungheni, a city near the Romanian border, and my friend’s host mom says, ‘go to the bus station and wait for the 6:45 from Chișinău. The drivers name is Vlad.’ Sure enough, when the rutiera arrived, Vlad gave us a plastic bag with a little girl’s bathing suit in it. My friend’s host mom’s niece (got that?) had forgotten it in Chișinău, and she was due at rest camp the next morning. So now this past weekend, it came to be that I had 5 purple and orange nerf-floating-noodle thingies in my possession which were urgently needed by a group of volunteers in Chișinău the next day (no, you cannot buy nerf-floating-noodle thingies in Moldova). Well, it would require 6 hours and $13 if I were to bring them there myself, so I decided it was time for me to test out this system. I stood out on the side of the road at 5.45 the next morning, holding a bag of flourescent-colored nerf-floating-noodle thingies, waiting to hail the next rutiera to chisinau (all of the inter-city rutieras have signs in the front window listing the beginning and ending points, which often I can’t read until the rutiera is almost passing me by so then I quickly jutt out my hand to signal them to stop and they come screeching to a halt and then the driver glares at me or curses me under his breath in Russian). The 6:00 Soroca - Chișinău approaches, I signal him to stop (giving him an ample amount of time), give him my nicest ‘could you pretty please take these to the north bus station in Chișinău?,’ hand him 10 lei, and he takes them without even batting an eye and shoves them under his seat. Three hours later, a volunteer calls me to say she had made the pick-up. Success!

The four of us camp directors now have a favorite taxi-driver in Chișinău. We’ve been staying a lot in an apartment (the one from the ‘hahaha, nyet’ story) that requires a taxi ride from the center. We now always call this driver because he will go out of his way to bring us through the McDonalds drive-through to get McFlurries on our way to the apartment at 11:00 at night.

I went to a mass exorcism and slept in a monk’s bed. Just throwin' that out there.

And the last thing, there is now a washing machine in my house! I have gotten used to almost everything here that we would consider uncomfortable back home (I actually like holes better than toilets now), but I really had begun to loathe hand-washing my clothes. I don’t care that we don’t have a dryer, I just need something to wash, rinse, and wring out my clothes better than I can. I used the machine for the first time this week, and it was glorious! I’m telling you: appreciate your washing machines! Yes, try to buy one that uses less water and energy, and so on, but really, a washing machine is a good thing!

This entry is a guest entry, written by my family members who visited me from May 12-19: Moldova Visited

By Agnes, John J., and John F. Biese

(comments by me)

Mixed emotions was the perfect term for the rampage of feelings we experienced during the six week period from the time we decided to visit Katie until May 1st, the day we departed.

Anxiety had to be the leading emotion as we worried about the complex travel arrangements Expedia prepared for us – four different flights each way also, three different airlines each way. That, combined with the media reporting all the problems our airline companies were having, especially Delta, our major transport across the big pond, definitely made anxiety the king of emotions. Added to that was the task of finding accommodations in Vienna that weren’t astronomically expensive. (We can lecture on that topic for hours.)

Anticipation was next on the list as our 19 day trip would include visiting Vienna, Prague, Salzburg and Berchtesgaden before spending a week in Moldova.

And finally, excitement for seeing Katie for the first time since she left on September 9th 2007. During that time she had experienced so much that we wondered if it had changed her noticeably. (If we forget to mention it later, it did not. She’s the same old loveable Kate.)(Yes I am!)

The trip to Vienna where Katie was going to meet us was a looonnng one. It was caused by a canceled and a replacement flight that left us with a nine hour layover in Atlanta. We were supposed to leave Appleton around 11:00 AM and instead, left at 6:00. After our 10 day stay in Vienna we were on our way to Moldova. Katie left Vienna two days before we did to attend a weekend conference and would be waiting for us at the airport in Chisinau, the capitol city.

Arriving in Chisinau one and a half hours late, we slowly processed through customs and - the lost baggage department – Agnes’ bag never made it from Vienna. Fortunately she had judiciously packed her backpack-carryon for just such an occurrence as she would not retrieve her suitcase for five more days. (I was very impressed by the way my mother handled this situation – she wore the same clothes 3 days in a row and didn’t complain once!)

John F’s first memorable moment of Moldova was going out of the air terminal and seeing Katie in the face of three, male, taxi drivers, attempting to haggle them down on the price of a ride into town. She lost – they all stuck together and we were stuck with a high tab. (I beg to differ – I put up a dang good fight, and got them down from 200 lei to 150!)

We stayed that night at a hotel the Peace Corps uses for its meetings. The first thing Katie did after we arrived at the hotel was give us some do’s and don’ts for life in Moldova. First, do not flush the toilet paper. Roll it up and place it in the basket/bucket next to the commode. Next, always have a leu (10 cents) or two handy in case you needed to use a public toilet. Most countries in Europe charge to use public WCs – Water Closets. (In Vienna we needed a half Euro [75 cents]). Also, if we wanted a hot shower we had to take it betwixt 8 and 10 in the morning since that was the only time hot water was available.

The next morning we took our bags to Peace Corps HQ for storage while we trekked to Katie’s village for three days, carrying just enough clothing and supplies for that time period in our backpacks.

In Moldova there are three methods of transportation: Rutieras, taxis, and private autos. Rutieras are minivans you can stand up in and have seating for nine to twenty or so passengers. The joke among the PC people is: How many people can you get into a Rutiera? The answer: “Always one more.” There were 39 people at one time on the 22 seater we took to Volovita. (The worst part is that even though it’s suffocating in there, Moldovans refuse to open the window for fear of the dreaded current.) Another PC “game” we learned about is to trying to see how long you can stand up in a Rutiera without holding on to a part of the vehicle.

Katie’s village is a small community of about 1000 people located on a hill in northern Moldova. It has two blocks of paved streets, the rest composed of dirt and whatever the weather makes them. The only businesses I saw were a gas station and small café. (For the record, there are 3 tiny convenience stores.)

Shortly after arriving in the village we met her Moldovan partners Svetlana and Angela. It didn’t take long to realize why Katie liked working in Moldova. These ladies were wonderful and you could tell by the way they talked how much affection they had for Katie. Later that day we met Katie’s host sister Natasha. She is just a year older than Kate and is a really good friend. She has a degree in International Relations, can’t get a job or a visa to leave the country to get one, so she studied cosmetology hoping for success in that arena. While we were there, Natasha was replacing her mom where she worked – her sister and husband’s business – while she was visiting her husband in Prague where he was working. (Since we returned from our trip we learned that Natasha’s mom also got a job in the Prague area and we assume Natasha will continue to work for her.) Natasha did take her cosmetology exam using Katie as her model. How did she do? (Very well, considering she had the ‘ugliest client and most difficult task of making her look beautiful’ – yes, I endured 3 hours of women calling me hideous and advising Natasha on how to hide all of my 'imperfections'.)

We enjoyed the hospitality of several families, much to the chagrin of our waistlines. We tried every type of food we were served: roasted rabbit with wine, mamaliga (a type of corn bread) with wine, pork with wine, chicken with wine, sheep cheese with wine, – and many more dishes I cannot remember. We do think that they kept it pretty conventional for us – no head cheese, filet of tongue, meat jello etc. (The meat jello is actually quite tasty.)

Almost every family has a large garden and a menagerie of small animals – rabbits, chickens, and geese to sustain themselves. A few have cows and pigs. One we visited had bees and milking sheep – the latter obtained with Katie’s help.

Did I mention that wine is the number one agriculture product of Moldova? Everyone we ate with demonstrated that fact again, and again, and again. BURP! Her host sister even had the “nerve” to bring out the (home-made) vodka after a scrumptious meal she and her cousin prepared for us.

It would take another page or two to talk about the countryside – beautiful land to support agriculture; nearby town of Soroca (about 5 km) which has adequate stores, a fortress built in 1494 and a lot of gypsies; and Chisinau, the capitol city. But space is limited. Oh, what the heck:

The most crowded, cleanest restaurant in Chisinau with neat, uniformed workers – Mc Donald’s. Prices were as high as in the US – which was not the case in other restaurants where the prices were much lower.

The smallest businesses in Chisinau - old ladies sitting on a stool on the sidewalks next to a bathroom scale. Weigh yourself for a leu (pronounced “l-yo”). I weighed 85 kilograms on one.

The largest wine “cellar” in the world – just outside Chisinau – 650,000,000 liters of wine contained in 1,300 barrels (big ones about 8’ in diameter, 2,200 vats, and 2 million bottles. This is stored along 55 km. of underground streets that you travel on with autos. They make wine only when the grapes are good – they were in 2007, but not in several previous years. We bought a .7 liter bottle for $2.55. A nearby display case had .7 liter bottles for prices ranging from $1,237.50 to $2,475.00.

During our short stay we met several people and families Katie either lived or worked with and we realized that big hearted, friendly, and giving people surrounded Katie. These warm experiences of Katie’s village went a long way towards allaying this mother’s worries about her daughter in a far away land.

Our six day visit to Moldova was rewarding and reassuring and also gave us a greater understanding of Katie’s blogs – in summary, a tremendous trip. We still miss Katie however (I miss you too), but we worry much less.

Visit again next year????? Possibly (They’ll be back)

A couple weekends ago we were in Chișinău for some more interviews for our camp counselors. We are tired of paying for hotels ($13 is expensive on a PC budget), so we decided staying at an apartment for free would be better. Turns out one volunteer’s host mom has a sister who is working in Italy and has an empty apartment in the city. So the host mom drew us a detailed map of how to get to the building, as well as how to find the apartment once we’re in the building, and how to turn on the water once we’re in the apartment. So it’s about 11 pm, and we’re dropped off by taxi at building 29, and the driver gives a slight wave and says to look for our building (33 according the map) over there somewhere. Ok. These are huge Soviet apartment blocks, not well marked, and we can’t find 33 anywhere. We happen to catch site of a man coming out of building 31, about to get into his mini-bus. We ask him if he can tell us where building 33 is and give him our map. He’s not exactly friendly, and he tells us 33 doesn’t exist. Super. We’re like, ‘but it has to, it’s on the map!’ He says it’s probably supposed to be 31, and we should call the people we are visiting to come out and get us, but we reply that there is no one there. He turns over the map and looks at the drawing of the apartment within the building. He lets out a Hahuhuhuh, followed by a definitive ‘nyet.’ What is it with me and the nyet’s? We were like, what does that mean? He then asks us if we have keys. Yes. Let me see them, he says. What’s the name of the people you are visiting? We don’t know, it is a relative who went to Italy. He then pulls out his cell phone. We were like, oh geez, is he calling Italy? What did we do? Turns out he was calling the volunteerțs host mom. He asks her if her sister is expecting visitors from the US, and then yells at her for writing 33 on the map instead of 31. Turns out, that out of all the thousands of people living in these huge apartment blocks, we ask assistance of the very man who has been left with the task of looking over this woman’s apartment while she is in Italy. Lucky us! After clearing up the matter with the host mom, he brings us upstairs, unlocks the bazillion locks, turns on the water for us, and shows us around. The joke for the rest of the weekend was, ‘hahahaha, nyet.’

Moldova rocks in the spring. Everything is becoming more beautiful every day, and I’m falling more in love with my village, now that it’s coming alive. The trees are blossoming, the sun comes out, you can see greens and browns and yellows on all the rolling hills. People are out in the fields, kids are out playing in the dirt roads, and goats, chickens, and other animals are roaming about. I’ve never actually seen a baby goat before – they are soooo cute when they jump around! There are random baby chicks wandering around in our garden, and my cat is pregnant. I go on frequent run/walks through the local forests with the kids, and they pick me flowers, and I sneeze a lot. I spent a long afternoon, a rare one by myself, sitting in a orchard down in the valley reading a book, watching the fluffy clouds pass overhead. People are out and about, and any time I walk anywhere in the village, I stop at least two or three times to chat with people about this or that. Last weekend, a fellow volunteer came to visit me in my village, and after persistant requests from four of the village girls, we took a walk to Soroca to go to the ‘candle,’ a big monument that looks like a candle, perched on top of a hill overlooking the river Nistru and to Ukraine beyond. It’s about 2.5 miles to the city, with a short cut down the hill through the woods, and then 500 stairs back up to the candle. It was a very pleasant walk (despite a little headwind and some sprinkles) and after making it up to the candle, we explored in the woods, looking for the cave and spring, which we never actually found. The four girls are great, and I’ve taken quite a liking to two of them, who always come to everything I ever suggest, including English, computer classes, leadership seminars, and running. I love feeling loved.

One of my favorite times in the last month was the evening a spent with a fellow volunteer and her host parents, after doing a seminar in her village. We just sat at the table for a good three hours talking about who knows what and laughing a lot. I’ve gotten to the point where I can converse freely without thinking about language, if there are fewer people and they aren’t all talking quickly and all at once amongst themselves. By the end of the evening, he had pulled out his mini-accordion, and Sam (the other volunteer) had pulled out her ukulele, and we were all singing. Evenings like that are the best.

Work-wise, things are going. I’ve been busy with computer classes for both adults and kids, and collaborating with the kindergarten for a grant. My partners and I have been discussing various project ideas, and of course I’ve been busy with the camp. Also, the volunteer in Soroca and I took a few days and went to all of the banks in the city to investigate different credit options for entrepreneurs. There are 7 different institutions, including one specifically for business loans, and yet none of them really offered anything favorable. There is no investment mentality here – people don’t really understand the concept of investing money now – to build a greenhouse, install irrigation, buy higher quality seeds, etc. – and seeing better results a few years from now. However, with the credit conditions here, I can see why they would be somewhat averse to taking out a credit, regardless of the prospects. The absolute longest term that we found was 7 years, so any real long term investment is out. The average annual interest rate was about 24%, paid monthly, with no grace period. Also, the problem of collateral – some banks required as much as 200%! Most people don’t have anything to offer. I keep reading about various development agencies that have worked with the banks here to provide a system of credit for antrepreneurs, but so far I have not seen that put into practice at all. Makes it hard to convince people of the benefits of investment. So that’s a little frustrating.

At home I’ve finally convinced my family to let me be the designated dish-washer. This came after I helped my mom cut fire wood (yeah, we’re still building fires at night to heat the house), and spent a morning hacking weeds out in their plot of land just outside the village. I’m becoming more Moldovan everyday, and feeling more at home.

This past weekend was the Orthodox Easter. And no offense to my own religion, but it is way cooler than the Catholic Easter. The night before all the young people build fires with tires (yeah, ok, that’s not real good for the environment) and then jump over them, and there is some prediction about your marriage depending on how you jump. Then many people go to Church starting at 11pm and stay until the sun comes up. I didn’t do that, but I did wake up at 3 to go with my host sister and uncle to my grandma’s village and go to Church there. The most important thing is that you take your basket of Easter food (eggs, meat, and especially the ‘pasca’ – special bread, cheese) and get it blessed by the priest before the sun comes up. The ceremony was beautiful. The entire village (or at least someone from each family) was lined up along the walkway leading up to the Church, with their baskets in front of them, holding candles that brightened up the dark morning. Around 4 the priest came out, flanked by a choir of 20 teenage girls, said a prayer, and then walked around and sprayed everyone and their food with water. After this, we dropped off grandma and went home to sleep for a few hours. The rest of the day was of course filled with eating and drinking and family. We started at home at 11 (eating the blessed food first, of course), and two sets of aunts and uncles and cousins came over. After I was so full I couldn’t move anymore, we went back to grandmas for some more food. This grandma rocks. Like all grandmas, she’s always trying to give treats to the kids, and even though she’s old and walks with a cane (i.e., a bent tree branch), she still takes care of chickens, pigs, a dog, a sick husband, two new baby goats, her home and garden, and so much more. She wears the traditional baba head scarf, a thick maroon (with purple and red flowers) bathrobe-like sweater, with a gray fur pad tied around her waist, and thick slipper-like boots on her feet. You just want to hug her. Anyways, after grandma’s house, we went back home and the neighbors came over, including the daughter home from college. We ate again, and later in the evening went to the ‘joc’ or village dance. The had speakers and a keyboard set up in the back of a truck, with big lights illuminating a little clearing in the center of the village. 20-somethings home from college or working abroad reunited, little kids ran around, and the adults chatted and let loose for an evening. There was dancing until the wee hours of the morning. I was immediately sought out by a somewhat inebriated young man home from Moscow. Jeepers, I couldn’t get rid of this guy! I was dancing whether I wanted to or not. At the end of one song, all of the men are supposed to pull out their hankercheif and kneel down on it on one knee and kiss the hand of the woman. However this dude couldn’t find his hankercheif and was wearing white pants, so he kept saying ‘just wait a second, just wait a second!’ as he frantically searched for it. I was like ‘I’m waiting, I’m waiting!’ Everyone in the immediate are was looking and laughing (in a good way). Finally, I took off my black coat and put it down on the ground in front of him, and he knelt down on that. Everyone cracked up. A little while later he proclaimed that ‘his heart beats for me’ and I decided it was time to go. All in all, not a bad Easter. Oh, and for the next 40 days, instead of greeting each other normally, people say ‘Christ is risen,’ which is responded to with ‘He is risen indeed.’ Kind of nice, and interesting, since that would never happen at home.

Ok folks, this is a long one -- a lot has happened since I last wrote. So grab a cold one and settle in...

Within the time span of two short weeks, I managed to play baseball, start a running club, get tipsy at a 1 year old’s birthday party, and drink German beer and dance the polka in public – all things I never thought I’d ever do in Moldova.

For starters, yes! They play baseball here! (Skip to next paragraph if you are bored by baseball details.) There are two leagues around Chișinău with a dozen or so teams. One of the volunteers who played with the Moldovans last summer started up an all-American team this year, so naturally I jumped at the opportunity to play. I was told that there were other girls on the team, but come game day, they were nowhere to be seen. So, having not played competitively in years, and having never actually played baseball, I was a little leery about just jumping in this game. I offered my cheerleading services instead. But after three innings, the first catcher said he was tired and so in I went. The coach of the other team, who was calling the game from the mound, was like, ‘Jerry (the volunteer who started the team)! What’s with the girl?!’ He was like, ‘It’s cool, she plays.’ I was like, ‘Oh dear Lord, please help me not make a fool of myself.’ It was so strange to be back behind the plate again, and strange to get used to the overhand delivery. But I stopped almost everything in the dirt, much to the amazement of more than one person, including myself. I also got a lot of dirty/curious/come-hither looks from the members of the other team as they came up to the plate. I should mention that the age range of the other team was about 12 to 60, and they could more or less play. Oh, and the field was basically your typical sandlot (see photo). There was a path going through the middle of it, which most people avoided, seeing that there was some sort of game in progress. There was, however, one woman and her little boy, who marched right through the middle of the game, and then got in a shouting match in Russian with the other team. Oh, Moldova. Oh yeah, and I was looking forward to hearing the Romanian words for the baseball lingo, but unfortunately, the other team was mostly Russian-speaking, and all of the baseball-specific words were simply in English. Like ‘out’ or ‘batter.’ The bases were called by the Russian numbers (Adeen, Dva, Tree), and there was a lot ‘davai, davai!’ (let’s go, let’s go!). Anyways, on to my at-bat. I was forced to go up to the plate having not even picked up a bat in ages. Lucky for me, with a 1-2 count, our man was caught stealing to end the inning. So to start the next inning, I winked at the pitcher, who was clearly flustered by my presence, and managed to get a walk (or ‘baz on balls’). I didn’t realize until I got to first that I have no idea what the rule is for leading off. I just kinda danced around out there, and the pitcher tried to pick me off once, hehe. All in all it was a wonderful day. The sun was out, there was that smell in the air (wait, that was probably burning trash...), there was the crack of the mitt and the ping of the bat, and a slight feeling of being part of a team again. Oh, and we lost like 20 to 2.

Moving on...I have a running club! Never thought I’d see the day. So I was teaching English one day, when one of the girls in the front row blurted out, ‘Miss Kate, are you running today? Can I go with you?’ About four others chimed in, ‘Yeah, I want to run too!’ I was blown away. They refused to continue with the English lesson until I set a date and time for us to run. Five kids showed up at my gate the next Tuesday. Cool! Of course they are wearing things like jeans and slippers, but what they heck, let’s see what they got. Well, we made it about half way to the next village, or about 5 km total. Not bad!! And it was fun! They’re all really chatty and energetic. So we went again the next day. The third day I had a very important 1-year-old’s birthday party to attend, but the kids ran without me. Apparently word of this daily athletic endeavor is spreading beyond the English circle. Saturday morning I got out off the rutiera in Soroca, a little girl came running up to me and said, ‘Miss Kate, are you running this afternoon? I would like to run too.’ I had never even seen this girl before! Ok! That afternoon 10 kids showed up, only 4 of whom I actually knew. So now each day the group changes a bit, and the kids have varying abilities. Some of the kids who really can’t keep up have started riding bikes along side the runners. But it’s just great that they’re out there. And there’s even an expressed interest in having a little 5k here. Man that would be awesome, but I’m not going to get too excited yet.

So the 1-year-old’s b-day. Man, these people celebrate everything. And they don’t celebrate half-way. The little girl, Vica, is my host cousin, and the entire family from both sides showed up for the occasion. I had never met the uncle side of the family before, and they were pretty cool. The grandpa was awesome. The grandpas are always the best. We made a ‘Catusha’ sandwich when he found out his wife and I have the same name. He found out that we both have the same favorite Moldovan food (stuffed cabbage), but then proceeded to tell me that it’s much better when you smother it in the meat jello. Ummm... not sure I agree on that one.

There is also a lot of celebrating simply because it’s March. I guess spring officially begins here on March 1st, and it is tradition for people to wear little ‘Mărțișori’ on their shirts for at least the first week, if not the whole month. The girls crochet these little pins, which consist of a red and a white tassel. Red symbolizes love, and white new life. Apparently the girls give it to the boys of whom they are fond, but pretty much everyone has one. I did get one from one of my English boys, and one of my English girls. I wear them proudly (one at a time). There was also much hoopla surrounding March 8, International Women’s Day. Everyone was talking about it starting in February, but other than a few flowers being given, I didn’t really see a whole lot of action for the actual day.

Last week we were all in Chișinău for an in-service training, and the second night we went to a German restaurant. It was wonderful!! They had everything from Franziskaner beer to men in lederhosen playing the accordion! The music was a Moldovafied polka, but fun nevertheless. The place was packed, but no one was really dancing. Until we came, that is. We got out there for the chicken dance and some polka/hora dances. When the chicken dance was played again a few hours later, a few Moldovans joined us and said it is more fun when the Americans are there. Hehe.

Last weekend, the M22s (the volunteers who arrived in February) had a field trip to Soroca. So naturally, TJ, my fellow volunteer who lives in Soroca, and I decided it would be fun to meet up with them, since we hadn’t had the occasion to get to know any of them yet. We weren’t really sure where to find them, but we knew where to start – the fortress. It is not possible to go to Soroca and not go to the fortress. It was built by the son of Moldova’s hero, Ștefan cel Mare (Steven the Great, who was a cousin of Vlad the Impaler), as a defense against the Turks in the early 16th century. It’s not very big, and not super remarkable, but I suppose interesting enough. The two of us have been there multiple times, since anytime anyone comes to the area, we have to take them to the fortress. (Naturally, should any of you come to visit, we will go to the fortress.) So we walk in, and the two ladies who work there immediately said, ‘the Americans were here, but now they’re at the synagogue.’ As simple as that, we didn’t even have to say anything. We caught up to the Americans just as they were boarding the bus to go to lunch. Super. We hitched a ride and I spent the lunch hour talking with the new volunteers. It was kinda crazy to think how far I’ve come since six months ago, when I was in their shoes. Everything was new and strange and overwhelming. Now everything is old and normal and overwhelming. Anyways, it was fun to talk to them, and maybe offer some reassurance. Then they went off to meet the Gypsy King, and I went off to meet my running club.

Well, apparently the women in my village have decided that I’m fat and ugly. Well, not so harshly, but yeah. I was sitting down the other day when one of them grabbed my stomach and was like, ‘what’s this?!’ I was like, ‘what?! This is what happens when you yell at me to eat all day every day!’ Fact is, it’s kind of a miracle that I haven’t gained any weight since being here. Anyways, they went on to say that it’s not ok for me to be fat until I’m married. Also, more than one person has told me I should wear more make-up (I usually only put on a little mascara), and I should cut my hair and style it every day. Apparently this past week all of the teachers decided they would cut my hair for me. I put my foot down there. I’m in the Peace Corps for cryin’ out loud! It’s not like I dress poorly, in fact, quite the opposite. I just don’t get all gussied up. Seriously, the young girls here dress like their going to a fancy club every day. It’s starting to get on my nerves. I’m ok with being single!!! And when I do find someone, it’s not going to be because I’m a beauty queen!

So you want to know what it is I actually DO here? Well, I’ve been occupying my time quite nicely of late. I’ve been working a lot with my fellow directors on planning for the summer camp. We had to finish our grant applications, which included a detailed budget that I happily put together in excel (I heart Excel!). We’re now in the process of recruiting and selecting our Moldovan counselors, whom we will interview this Saturday. We’re also revising the curriculum a bit from last year, so that will take a lot of work. In my community, I of course have my English and running groups, and I’m going to start working a few days a week at the computer center and giving lessons in various computer skills. I’m also working on putting together a program in Excel to automate the calculations for the village’s savings and loan association – right now everything is done by hand, and there are piles and piles of paper that take forever to sort through when looking for something specific. I’m translating the instructions for the World Map Project – we’re going to paint a huge map (I heart maps!) on the wall of the cafeteria that is being newly constructed at the school, and throughout and after the painting of the map there will be various fun learning activities. And as far as developing the local economy, I’m trying to figure out what project to run with...expressed desires include expanding/developing a dairy farm, constructing a greenhouse to grow strawberries, building a cold storage facility to keep fruits, and a rabbit farm. These all could be rather large projects, and the problem I face now is trying to figure out who would really be committed to something and who is more like, ‘oh, that would be nice, but it’s too much work.’ And of course, the fact that I don’t actually know anything about that stuff. But I can help organize seminars, find information, plan budgets, search for funding, etc. I’ve also gotten repeated requests to help the local kindergarten procure toys (for inside and outside) and furniture. The kids literally have nothing right now. I’m also continually reading information on a variety of topics and trying to improve my language. I would like to work more with my NGO just on how it is structured and what it’s scope is, but today I found out that the only three active women don’t really have time to dedicate to the NGO and therefore want to de-register as an NGO and simply be an ‘association.’ Hmmm. So yeah, that’s the more or less useful stuff that I’m doing!

Pa for now!

Well, I’ve been here over 6 months now. Jeepers. February 20th marked the end of our 3 month ‘lockdown’ period, during which we weren’t allowed to leave our sites except for New Years and a two-day language training. Now we are more or less free to come and go as we like. My group (that is, almost all of the 34 of 40 of us who still remain) got together in Chișinău to celebrate our freedom and trade stories. Two of the volunteers who’ve been here two years already were gracious enough to host us at their apartment, and we made delicious food such as Kraft mac and cheese, soft shell tacos, brownies, and raw veggies and ranch dip. Now I probably won’t eat those things again for another 21 months.

The weather has finally taken what I believe to be a permanent turn for the warmer. We’ve enjoyed beautiful sun-shiny days and temperatures in the 60s. This is great for me and my aversion to mud and fading willpower to run in the cold. The other day I was out running without a hat on (gasp!) and an old lady down the street shook her cane at me and yelled at me for running without a hat. I laughed. Then when I was further out in the countryside one of the young men from the village was driving home with his family and honked (a crazy weeooo-weeeoo sound) and waved. I’ve never actually talked to him, so I was glad he recognized and acknowledged me rather than offering me a ride like most people do. The downside to all the sunshine and warmness is that things are drying out – not good for an agriculture-based economy. And if it does freeze again, all the trees that have started blooming will be doomed. So let’s hope for the best. Oh, and another good thing about being warm – my laundry dries in less than 24 hours instead of a week!

I’ve picked up a hobby – crocheting. All of the girls at school have to learn the arts of knitting, crocheting, and sewing, which they do while the boys are out in the field learning boy stuff. The social worker (with whom I share an office, if you remember) is crocheting a ‘summer sweater’ and solicited help from the crocheting teacher at the school, so I decided to go along and learn a bit myself. I’ve picked it up pretty quickly, and I too would like to make myself a little somethin-somethin. We’ll see if I get further than the time I started knitting a scarf....

I think you all know that I love language, which certainly an attractive part of being in the Peace Corps. I’ve started to feel pretty good about where I’m at – almost everyone understands me, and even though I make mistakes and have a funny accent, people love the fact that I’m trying. And then there are the 9th grade punks. I had finally overcome my fear of speaking in Romanian in front of larger groups of people, especially people I don’t know. So I didn’t think anything of holding a short meeting to give some preparatory information to the 9th graders (who I haven’t met before) who were attending the business seminar that weekend. I began speaking and two of the boys in the back burst out laughing. I thought they were having a conversation of their own, so I waited a few seconds for silence to come and began again. They burst out laughing again, and this time it was clear that they were laughing at me. At me! I was like, what? I’d like to see you get up here and speak in English! I had gotten so used to people accepting the way I talk that it was a bit of a shocker for me. But no worries, I let it roll. The little kids like me anyways.

Last weekend I hosted a two-day business seminar for about 20 of the high-school aged kids in my village (fortunately, the aforementioned punks didn’t show up). Four Moldovans came from Chișinău and taught them the basics about entrepreneurship, marketing, management, economics, making a budget, and writing a business plan. At the end of the two days, each of four teams wrote and presented a busins supply and demand. It was some what of a rigorous two days, and I was very impressed with how active and enthusiastic these kids were, and how good their business plans were considering the circumstances. A couple of the 15 year-olds wanted to start up the business now!

Back to the language, I made another boo boo this week, but a really funny one. The words for ‘copies’ and ‘children/babies’ are very close – pretty much the only difference in the accent of the syllables. I tried to tell the social worker that I was going to the computer center to make copies for the seminar. But of course it came out that I was going to make babies. To make it even better, the guy at work who jokes 95% of the time overheard and said ‘What?! Do you have someone to help, or do you need me to come?’ I don’t think he’s going to let this one go for a long time.

Going back to the frettings of my last entry, I’m still racking my brain trying to figure out how I can help create more jobs for the people in my village. It really is sad and alarming how many people have left and continue to leave to find jobs in other countries. While I was at my crocheting lesson last week, the teacher read a few of the essays the kids had written about what they would do if they were president. Almost all the lists started with ‘create more jobs so my mother/father/sister/brother/neighbor can come home.’ Similarly, during Christmas, letters to Santa often began with ‘I want my mother/father/sister/brother/neighbor to come home.’ It breaks my heart.

Last weekend I went to Bălți, the second largest city in Moldova and predominantly Russian-speaking, to meet up with one of my co-directors for the women’s summer camp. We went around to different NGOs that we hope will provide us with speakers and/or informational materials for our camp. After that, we stopped at the piața to pick up some veggies for dinner, and of course all of the vendors spoke in Russian. However, I whipped out my mad Russian skills and correctly understood that the carrots cost 15 lei. Woot. Later that afternoon, we went to the orphanage, where my co-director volunteers every Friday, to play with the kids there. Again most of them spoke Russian, but I wowed them with my ability to ask, what is your name? And to respond, ‘my name is catuișa.’ Woot woot. Also, even though I just met these children, I managed to get four ‘pups’ (pronounced ‘poops’ – kisses) and two hugs!

This month we also started planning for this year’s Camp TARE, a week-long nation-wide camp for young women ages 18-22. Actually it’s more of a seminar series, covering topics ranging from professional skills to human-trafficking. TARE stands for (in Romanian) Young, Active, Responsible, and Equal, and the word ‘tare’ means strong. I’m one of four directors for the camp, and we’ve got some work to do before July! I’m also hosting a short seminar in my village at the end of February. The topic of this seminar is business for youth. In the village there is absolutely no business curriculum before the university level, so this two-day seminar will give some of the high-school age kids in my village an introduction to economics and entrepreneurship. So I have been preparing for that as well. And of course, English class is always good for some work and laughs. We played Jeopardy this week in order to review what we’ve learned so far, and I’ll just say that I need to work on class-room control, and perhaps next time I should have a better plan for debating who said what first. There was shouting (everyone at once), laughing, jubilation, and even a bit of crying. But overall I was pleased with what the kids have managed to learn up until now.

So I’m learning all about sheep. And I’m actually doing something somewhat useful! One of my partners and I are helping a woman from the village write a business plan to try to win a grant so she can buy another breed of sheep to cross-breed with her sheep in order to increase her overall production of milk. Apparently this other breed lactates a crazy amount. Anyways, from this milk she then makes sheep-cheese, that glorious product that is sold in the ‘brinza barn,’ my favorite part of the piata, as I mentioned in my Christmas entry. So I’ve read a whole bunch of material about raising sheep, and I’ve learned a whole bunch of new vocab, all of which will be extremely useful in daily life, of course. I’ve typed up and organized the entire plan, adding my opinions and advice where needed, all in Romanian! Although it is but something small, this is a start towards making an impact in my community!

When the snow melts, there is mud everywhere. I mean everywhere. Not just a few sticky spots here and there. There is sink-down-to-your-laces-in-thick-brown-gooey-junk-every-step mud. Completely unavoidable. Then why do I have to wash and polish my boots every single night?? My first step out the gate will completely undo all of my hard work and no one will even know that I cleaned them!

So I’ve spent a lot of time thinking lately. Not for lack of things better to do, but because there is a lot to think about. I am constantly plagued by the worries of not accomplishing anything while I’m here. Outside of the capital and a few larger towns, there is virtually no economy. How can we create jobs here so that people don’t have to leave? Of course I can’t solve the problems of the entire country, but even in my village? How does one raise the living standards of this tiny community in rural Moldova? Yes, the land is fertile. But does it really make sense for a village to have 1000 individual agriculture-based small businesses? One thing that the Soviet collective farms had right was the idea of economies of scale. What can a person get with 3 hectares of corn?! Or half a hectar of wheat? And of course there are the complaints of the low prices received for cereals, so why don’t they switch to higher-value crops? And if someone buys another’s land and starts to produce more efficiently, where does that leave the other guy who now has nothing? He can’t exactly just up and get another job. If someone does have the initiative to start something larger, where does the start-up capital come from? Most can’t afford the 25% and higher interest rates, or they don’t have any sort of collateral to offer. Hardly any one has savings of any kind, maybe some euros stashed in a jar, and most don’t even have bank accounts at all. I don’t want to be a grant-writer, but in many cases it might be the only way. But how is that sustainable? So that is one line of thought running through my head.

I’ve also been pondering the questions raised by two recent publications: an editorial in the New York Times criticizing the Peace Corps for not being an effective international development organization because of the inexperience of the young people it recruits, as well as a book, The Search for Bliss, which labels Moldovans as the unhappiest people on earth. As for the former, I have in fact at times felt under-qualified for my job here. But how important are these tangible development results? How important is balancing the first Peace Corps goal of development with the remaining two goals of cross-cultural understanding? And how many other international development agencies are reaching out into remote villages like the Peace Corps is in dozens of countries? How many of these agencies have a model in which the developer becomes of part of the community that he seeks to aid, learns the languages, and really gets to know the people? But I didn’t come here solely for two years of cultural exchange, as great as that is. I came to make a difference in the lives of these people. Some say they don’t need help here, others say they need all the help they can get, and still others say there is no way to help unless you have access to money. While I may not be a development expert, I do bring energy, knowledge of the workings of a market economy, ideas, an open-mind, and yes, some access to money. My time here will not be for nothing. As for the claim that Moldovans are the unhappiest people on Earth, yes, there is a good amount of unhappiness here. I discussed this with my host mother, who said, ‘Of course we’re unhappy! We can’t get jobs and our loved ones are gone!’ But the unhappiest people on Earth? Please. People don't spend their days moping around. In fact, there is much laughter and joking everyday. I see smiles and laughter and happy gatherings all the time here. The author of this book neglected to present both sides of life here. And furthermore, I think any attempt to label the unhappiest people on Earth is futile and ridiculous.

My final ponderings have revolved around my decision to join the Peace Corps, and, I suppose, the meaning of life. Yes, I believe life is preparation for eternal life in God’s kingdom, but what does that mean for me? What is God’s plan for me here on Earth? Is this really where he wants me to be, or did I just think this is where he wants me to be because this is where I wanted to be? And why did I want to be here? To satisfy my own craving for adventure? To avoid having to choose and start a career? To learn a new language? To serve others and fulfill my need for that ‘do-good’ feeling? Yes to all. Is that ok? I’ve asked myself many times what would really make me happy in life, and I always come to the conclusion that, after a strong relationship with Christ, relationships with people are what keep me going in life. Even the worst job I’ve ever had made me happy when I did it with people that I cared about and who cared about me. If it is the case that people are the most important thing to me, why do I keep choosing to leave them? Each place I’ve gone I’ve been incredibly blest to have made new amazing friends, but then when the time comes to leave, it is that much harder to. Is it enough to maintain relationships through long distance? There are so many people who have had an amazing impact on my life, but do they know it? I try to show my appreciation for others, but I don’t think I always succeed. Can I keep going on though life assuming that wherever I go there will be somebody with whom I want to laugh, spend time with, listen to, tell my stories to? And what does it mean to ‘make new friends, but keep the old?’ Everybody always asks me if I miss life in the US. The answer is no. I only miss people.

Alrighty, that is all. I promise to keep it a bit lighter next time!

New Year’s Eve in Chişinau with a bunch of the volunteers from my group was a blast. It was by no means glamorous – we ate dinner from the local supermarket, stayed in the cheapest hotel possible, went to the free concert in the central square, and had a dance party in our room. Such is the life on the budget of a volunteer! But we were together and had an absolutely wonderful time. The central square had a gigantic Christmas tree and some live music. The adjacent park was light beautifully, and had a section where people could take pictures in various Christmas scenes. Popular scenes included Spongebob and Patrick Star, a limousine, and giant mice (2008 is the year of the mouse, you know). The little tykes could go on pony rides, or get a ride with Santa on a motorized bed. (??)

On my way in to Chişinău for New Year’s, I stopped in the village where I spent the 10 weeks of training and visited my host family there for a few hours. It was kind of like going home – everything and everyone was familiar. I arrived in time for lunch, and as usual, my host mom was busy in the kitchen, preparing for the evening’s festivities. My sister was home from Bucharest, where she is in her final year at University, my dad was out getting the car washed, and my brother was still sleeping. I sat at the table in my usual spot as my mom filled me in on all that has been going on with them – how her husband is sick but doesn’t want to go to the doctor, how her son has a girlfriend and finally admits it, and how she’s annoyed that her daughter’s boyfriend never talks with the rest of the family. And of course I filled her in on how life is for me in my new home. One by one the rest of the family wandered into the kitchen, and we all enjoyed a wonderful lunch. My mom had saved the last head cauliflower for me because she knows I like it, even though my dad had been wanting to eat it for awhile. That’s when you know you’re loved! They scarfed down the chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodles that I had brought, and I scarfed down several clatite (cheese-filled crepes with honey, mmm). The whole time I was there I conversed freely in Romanian, and my mom complimented me on how much better I have gotten! I mean, I was actually able to have a regular conversation with my host dad, something I never really was able to do while I was there before. After lunch we took a family photo, and I headed on my way with the invitation to return again soon.

Christmas (Jan. 7) was a white one. It snowed about a foot, so naturally nobody went anywhere except on foot. That killed our plans to go to grandma’s house, in a village about 5mi away. But of course we had made food for an army over the weekend (which, if we weren’t planning to be home for Christmas, why did we make it?!), so the 8 or so relatives who live in our village came over and we ate all day. I even got adventurous and ate some of the meat jello. The little kids in the village came caroling in pairs or trios, which was so cute! The would yell from outside, ‘Can we sing?’ and my mom would shout back through the window, and then we’d watch them through the window as they sang (or shouted) their little hearts out, all bundled up in their winter coats with the fur around the hoods. Then my mom would bring out the bowl of candy and cookies and give them each one leu (the smallest unit of paper currency). Just after dark we heard a commotion at the gate and saw two large figures walk past the window. Then I heard a man’s loud voice yelling something, and I was sure some other jolly uncle had arrived. But then the door opened, and in walked the village priest, all dressed up in his splendid blue robes with gold trim, the huge gold cross around his neck contrasting his black beard, carrying a picture of Jesus and chanting some sort of prayer. Immediately everyone in the room jumped to their feet, made the sign of the cross (backwards), and formed a line to kiss the picture. I was a bit startled, but joined right in like this was perfectly normal. And then he left. The whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than a minute. Merry Christmas.

It was nice to go back to ‘work’ on the 9th after about 10 days of vacation. The first morning I spent talking with the social worker about life – problems, love, work, family, the Avon catalogue, hopes, and a variety of topics. I feel like we really connected on a personal level, which is a big step for me, because I so badly want to have relationships beyond the superficial level. After lunch her son came in, having finished school for the day. I adore Victor. I gave him a dollar bill for Christmas, and oooh, was he excited about that! I have the cutest video of him listening to my iPod and dancing and singing along to O-Zone. He’s not afraid to correct me when I say something wrong, ‘Noooo, Kate, not like that!’ And he’s so cute when I ask a question and he thinks about to explain it to me. He likes to play with my hair, and he always wants to sit by me. Yup, I’m so cool. In the afternoon our little town hall community celebrated one of the accountant’s birthday, which had been the day before. These people can throw together a beautiful spread in no time at all! And we had everything laid out nicely and switched offices three times before we finally settled on the accountant’s office. There was much laughing and shouting and singing, and more and more, I’m starting to feel like a normal part of it all. Victor pointed out how my cheeks were a little rosy after drinking the champagne, and his mom and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. Later when we were singing there was one line that I didn’t know, so I just opened and closed my mouth a lot and then sang the last word really loudly. I looked around to see if anyone had noticed, and caught Domnul Viorel’s eye (the funny guy who works at the town hall) and he gave me a wink and we both laughed.

I really love the school community in my village – both the teachers and the students. The forty or so kids that are in my English class are so cute! There is one boy who sits in the front row who is so enthusiastic. Any time the class is repeating words, he practically shouts, and sometimes he gets a little ahead and instead of repeating with the rest of the class, he is leading and saying the word at the same time as I am. If I ask a question, sometimes he’s so excited to give the answer that he jumps out of his seat a little bit and reaches out over the desk and points with his pencil. If only everyone were that enthusiastic about learning! The teachers are great too. The other day I was walking home for lunch, and all the kids were walking up the road from the valley where everyone goes sledding. There was a group of three boys pulling a sled behind them, and as I got closer I heard a grown man’s voice yelling ‘faster!’ As I passed the boys, there was the phys ed teacher on hands and knees on the sled as the boys pulled him up the hill!! Hilarious! All the ladies who work at the school are wonderful. They all know me (although I can only remember about half of their names) and talk to me like I’ve been speaking Romanian my whole life. I’ve even joined them for sauna night on Thursdays, which is a whole other experience which I feel I cannot accurately describe here, but suffice it to say that I feel welcome.

The holidays ended with the St. Vasilie’s Day on the 13th, and the Old New Year’s Day on the 14th. I went over to my partner’s house again for St. Vasilie’s Day, and we sat at a huge dinner all day, and random carolers came by throughout the day and into the night. I mean, these people are hardcore caroling! One group of women even had and accordion, and we all went outside and danced the circle dance, and then my partner brought out some wine and a big plate of cake and everyone dug in! So apparently they used to celebrate New Year’s in the spring, because it was for blessing the planting of the new crops. So now on ‘New Year’s’ everyone throws seeds at each other and wishes a good harvest, everthing great this year, etc. etc. I was told this, but I forgot, so imagine my surprise when I passed a police car (which had come in from the city) on my way into work, and a policeman got out at threw something at me! I let out a little yelp and ducked and thought, ‘What the &%*# did you do that for?’ But then I saw the little seeds raining down and he was saying something to me, and I remembered. Hehe. I love Moldova.

So this year was definitely the most interesting Christmas that I’ve ever had. I rise as usual bright and early, but this year it is not to run downstairs and see what Santa has left under the tree. Instead I get dressed and head out to the ‘highway’ where I wait about 5 minutes before being picked up by a nice little old Russian-speaking man (yes, I hitchhike on a regular basis, but it is an accepted means of transportation here, and I only do it during the day if there is another woman in the car). We pick up a mother and son in the 4 kilometers between my village and the city of Soroca, and upon arriving at the bus station, I pay the man the customary 3 lei (about 27 cents) and walk the ten minutes to the center of town.

I meet up with a fellow volunteer by the huge Christmas tree, which kind of looks like some high school kids tee-peed it with red and green toilet paper, but is beautiful nonetheless. The two of us then continue on to the internet cafe, which is located in a basement near the town hall, and based on the dim lighting and bass thumping that you hear upon approaching, one could be fooled into thinking it is actually a disco. The teenage boy who works here, who dreams of one day visiting California, greets us in broken English that matches our broken Romanian, and set us up. All of the computers are in Russian, so he sometimes has to help me out when I can’t figure out where to click. Although, to my own credit, I am getting pretty good and sounding out Cyrillic. Anyhoo, I receive a call at 8.30 from my family, who have just arrived home from midnight Mass, and we are able to exchange Christmas greetings. (Side note – I love the fact that I can talk for hours with people thousands of miles away and not pay a dime!)

After the internet cafe we move on to the piata, which is always guaranteed for interesting times. Just outside the piata we stop to admire the sale of chickens. They are all just hangin’ out, not restrained in anyway. Some of them are stuffed inside pungas (rectangular, sturdy plaid plastic tote-bags). Others are calmly being carried away, one leg and wing being held, the other just dangling there. Doo-de-doo. The piata consists of hundreds of little booths with tin roofs all smashed together in aisles with room to almost comfortably fit two people across, but are almost always jammed with five. As much as I want to, I just haven’t gotten used the lack of personal space. Anyways, the piața is divided into clothes/shoes, food, and household items. You can find everything, including live fish, glittery cosmetics, Pantene ProV, Snickers bars, hundreds of pairs of knee-high black stiletto boots, extension cords, underwear, buckets, tiaras with gaudy gems that light up (I pick up one of those for New Years), and random car parts. Really just about anything imaginable. My favorite place is what I like to call the brînză barn, a large covered room with ladies all lined up behind tables with their scales and huge chunks of homemade goat cheese. The smell of the stinky cheese reaches the nostrils quickly, and the sounds of the ladies trying to get us to buy their cheese call out to us – ‘Fetele! Gustati!’ Girls! Try This! At the end of the row is the Unt Om (Butter Man) with his gigantic block of butter (there is no such thing as margarine here). Today he has chocolate butter! As I’m planning to make chocolate chip cookies this weekend, I buy 400 grams of the regular butter. And then I decide to get some of the chocolate butter too; perhaps I’ll join my dad in eating bread and butter with our tea tonight.

We head back to the Christmas Tree to meet up with another volunteer, and as we’re waiting, I hear my name (or rather, the version of my name that Moldovan’s manage to make out – Kait!). I turn and see Doamna Valentina, an active older woman from my village, accordion slung over her back, leading her gaggle of kindergarteners to the cultural center for a little Christmas concert. Viniti cu noi! Come with us! she calls out to me. We follow, but in staying consistent with Moldovan time, the concert doesn’t actually being at 10.00, as was planned. At 11.00 it still hasn’t begun, and we move on. I need to make a copy of my office key, so we head to the shoe-repair shop. The lady there only speaks Russian, but this is no problem. I point to my key, and to the key-copy-maker-machine-thingy. She holds up one finger, and I nod. She hands me the copy and tells me ‘ПЯТЬ’ (pee-at) which I know is 5 because I watch the figure-skating show all the time and hear them read off the scores – 5.8, 5.9, 5.8! I hand her five lei and thank her, СпaСИба (spa-see-ba). I am pretty proud of myself after that one.

Now it’s time to head back to my village and go to work. Kinda weird to be going to work on Christmas. But I have a plan to make it a little more interesting than usual. I pack up my laptop, with a playlist of Christmas songs ready to go, as well as a slide-show of Christmas pics from home. I throw in some candy and cookies, as well as a bottle of champagne, don my santa hat, and head to the primăria. My partner and the social worker are there when I arrive. Merry Christmas! I greet them as I enter. I pull out the laptop and plop down the bag of candy. They tell me that the mayor is not here today. Good, I say, because I have this too, and pull out the champagne. Haha, they say, good indeed! and my partner pulls a huge bottle of homemade wine out from under the desk, while the social worker takes a two-liter of beer out of the cupboard. Haha, they are prepared for my Christmas too! My fellow volunteer arrives from Soroca, the social worker’s adorable 6 year old comes in, and pretty soon everyone from the primăria is crowded into my little office having a grand old time. I impress them with my vast knowledge of the Russian language, as well as my mad caroling skills (I learned the Romanian translation of Jingle Bells). They admire my pictures from home, but aren’t too impressed with Bing’s White Christmas. All-in-all, it is a pretty successful little ad-hoc celebration.

Back at home, I prepare to resume the normal day’s activities. I hand wash some clothes (I can never seem to get all of the soap out!), and I’m sending out Merry Christmas text messages when I receive a call from my partner’s daughter. They want me to quick come over and help them out with something. I throw on my boots and coat and make my way in the dark down the dirt road to my partner’s house, and ten minutes later I am speaking on the phone with a nice old lady in Germany. Turns out my partner and her husband are friends with a couple in Germany, but now that the German couple’s son is away somewhere, they don’t have a translator. My partner wants to call and wish them a Merry Christmas, so my German-speaking skills are called into action. So here I am, Christmas night in Moldova, translating German into Romanian, and vice-versa. Interesting. After the call I try to excuse myself, since my family is waiting dinner on me. Oh no! Of course that is not an option. Now that I’m here I have to stay! My partner calls my host-ma.

I hear the dog barking outside, and in comes a young woman with a little boy in tow. My partner’s goddaughter and her son. A few minutes later, in comes her husband, who turns out to be the goofy guy who works at the primăria. I didn’t realize he was married, let alone had a kid. His wife is very friendly and talkative, 6 months younger than I, and inside I entertain the hope of making a friend my age, even though she is a married woman with a 1.3 year-old. We eat a delicious meal, talk a lot, and while-away the night. It is nice to spend some time with my partner and her family, away from the office. I finally take my leave around 9.30.

Back at the casa, I call one of my best volunteer friends and we exchange Christmas stories and make plans for our New Year’s night in Chisinău (one-day escape from our three month lock down!). We hang up and my family calls me again, 14 hours after the first call and a long day for me, and a good night’s rest for them! This is a wonderful end to a wonderful Christmas. I am able to talk to the whole family, including a few surprise guests – Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Joe are there too, as well as Mr R., my most favoritest theater director. An hour later I finally hang up, and as I lay my head down, I think to myself, despite low expectations, this really was a merry Christmas!

I believe a few words should be devoted to describing the tv programming here. For one, it is 90% from Russia, and therefore not of use to me. But as that is all anyone watches, that is what I watch, usually staring blankly at the tv and thinking about something else. The main event each weeknight is ‘Tatianas’ Day,’ a soap opera that all the ladies talk about at work and my last host mom loved. She would explain to me how Tatiana Razbeshtina was in love with Tatiana Dakhova’s husband, Sergiu, and stole her baby and said it was hers and Sergiu’s while Sergiu was away in Moscow for nine months so that when he came back he would love her again. Uh huh. The music is very dramatic anyways. There are a few programs that are possible to enjoy without understanding – such as the Russian version of American Idol, ‘Star Factory.’ Or the skating show where well-known personalities are matched up with professional skaters and the pairs compete every week with new creative routines. Or the talent competition to win a million-bajillion rupies, with judges who all seem to be hard to please. I thought the old man wearing pink make-up playing the saw was pretty dang entertaining, but they gave him a definite ‘Nyet.’ Then there’s the show where teams of three wear silver spandex body suits and helmets and have to contort their bodies into the shapes that are cut into a foam wall that comes from behind a curtain and moves toward them rapidly – if they don’t fit their bodies through the shapes as the wall reaches them, it knocks them into a pool. And there is another show where four teams – the US, Russia, China, and Kazakhstan - compete in the most random contests ever. Like wearing huge ostrich costumes and pedaling tiny bikes and then mounting a large spinning platform and trying to knock down baby bottles hanging from ropes with their beaks. What?!!

The English classes are not a total disaster. If I have a little time to prepare, I can come up with something to do for an hour. The kids are so cute and eager to learn. They have real problems pronouncing the ‘Th’ sound, and it is not uncommon for French or Russian words to slip out (being that English is now their 4th language). I don’t know how much I can teach them when the only resources we have are one hour per week, a few pieces of chalk, and a small blackboard, but I think there is some sign of understanding and progress in just two weeks. At any rate, these few lessons are helping me become more integrated into the community.

I went to a two-day conference in Chişinău with my partner. It was about revising the village’s 5 year strategic plan. Because the topics covered were very familiar to me (mission, vision, SWOT, goals, objectives, etc.), I was able to understand almost everything, even though it was all in Romanian at warp speed. I’m really starting to get the hang of it! But then there are days that I feel like I really don’t have it at all. So I suppose it’s time for me to tell about some of my more comical linguistic slip-ups. Back in PST, I mixed up the word ‘fond’ with ‘fund’ and instead of saying ‘I need funding,’ I said ‘I need ass.’ The other day when I wanted a stapler, I kept saying, ‘Unde este capşuna?’ and was met with confused looks. Turns out I was asking where the strawberry was. The word I was looking for was capsator, not capşună. Oops. Or one time I wanted to say that after a year maybe I will know some Russian too, but instead I said I will know Russian after an hour. I was wondering why they all started to laugh. Finally, I was at a restuarant and asked what the placinte (little pasty-like thingies) were stuffed with, and she said ‘curechi.’ To me, this sounded like ‘cu urechi,’ which means ‘with ears.’ Huh? That doesn’t sound very tasty! Turns out curechi is another word for cabbage.

So on the rare occasion that I use an actually restroom (such as during my stay in Chisinau for the aforementioned conference), I always seem to have a problem finding the light. The light switch never seems to actually be located in the restroom. It’s somewhere outside, hidden. I usually just push every button I can see within a 10 meter radius, and more often than not I end up turning off more lights than turning any on. Or sometimes there is a switch inside the little room with the toilet, but it’s actually for the room with the sink, whereas the switch in the room with the sink is for the room with the toilet. The other day at a restaurant I never found a switch at all, and finally just gave up and peed in the dark.

Since it snowed a couple of weeks back, my village and the surrounding land have been extra beautiful. The snow lays a little different on each different plot of land, so you can see the checkerboard of fields on the hills, and the trees have held some snow. The main road in the center of the village has turned in to the sledding hill for the kids, who form chains with their runner-sleds. Unfortunately with the snow came ice, and my walk to work is treacherous. I’ve had a few really close calls, and running is pretty much out of the question unless I wear the hideous bright yellow yak trax provided by peace corps.

So now that I’m actually an official volunteer, what is my typical day like? Well I usually wake around 7:30 and putz around in my room for a bit. (Sometimes I get up at 7.00 and go for a quick 5k.) Sometimes I eat breakfast alone, sometimes with the rest of the family, usually consisting of bread and brînză (goat cheese), sometimes fried eggs and salami, and if I’m lucky, a really delicious oatmeal porridge concoction. I get into work around 9:00, in my little office at the primăria (town hall). I chat with the social worker who shares the office, I study language, I visit some of the other 7 people who work at the primaria, they come to visit us, I translate random things into English for random people, I have language lessons twice a week, I teach English lessons twice a week, and I talk with the people who come in to take out or pay off a loan. (My NGO takes out large credits from the bank in Soroca and then gives out smaller loans to the community members.) Sometimes I have little field trips, such as when I was invited to go to watch the kindergarten Christmas show – so cute! I usually get home between 4-5, and I chat with my sister or dad, and we make dinner (or rather, I try to help make dinner, but usually they just tell me to sit and relax and talk to them). I enjoy dinner because we talk a lot and the food is delicious. After dinner we go into the living room to watch TV (as described above), I usually read (I finished Harry Potter in Romanian and have moved on to a novel in Romanian that I haven’t read in English – I’m really challenging myself!) or I write or play on my computer or learn a few Russian words just for kicks (reading in Cyrillic is kind of like a decoding game!). Perhaps a relative or neighbor will stop by, but usually more on the weekends. At 8ish, we go back into the kitchen for tea and sweets. Well, we girls eat sweets, and my dad eats bread slathered with butter. This is my favorite time of day, along with dinner. It is so nice for everyone to sit together and talk, something that rarely happened at home. However, since it is dark at 5 now, it’s not like anyone has any place else to go. It will be sad when my dad goes back to the Czech Republic and my sister finds a job and moves to Chisinau. But I know that my sister is getting anxious to find work and not have to sit around home all day doing nothing. That is a horrible feeling. So even though I will miss her, I am praying that after the holidays are over, she will be able to find a good job. Getting back to my day, at 9.30 I run out to the outhouse one last time and then retire to my room, where I usually do a body/ab circuit and try not to make too many grunting noises as I exert myself. I read for a bit and hit the sack around 11. So not extremely exciting, but each day is a bit different, and each day there is something worthwhile, be it meeting a new person, or understanding a joke.

Well that's all for now, stay tuned for tales from Christmas!

I had just gotten adjusted to life in my village where I had training. I had a great family and wonderful new friends. I knew how to take the rutiera to Chisinau. I knew where I could run to get in a good workout. I knew the ladies at the convenience store, and I enjoyed Mama Axenia’s shouting across the village. I was used to being endearingly called ‘Catiușa’ (Ka-too-sha). Plus I had the safety blanket of other Americans in my same situation. Now all of that is gone, and I have had to start all over, alone. The last three weeks have been a rollercoaster of emotions, to say the least. But I suppose this is what I signed up for!

I’m living in a village of about 1000, not far from Soroca, a city of about 20,000, one of four Moldovan cities mentioned in Lonely Planet. I am also just across the Nistru River from Ukraine. My village has one paved road (for about a block), three convenience stores, a grade school, kindergarten, town hall, small medical center, a gas station, and a ‘disco.’ It is situated on the top of hill, with amazing views of the rolling hills and forests around. I have to walk down hill from the town hall, where I work, to my house, and I almost always stop to enjoy the view of the valley below and the hills with both forest and farmland rising up behind it. I usually chase chickens down the road or pass a horse or cow just hangin out at the side of the road.

I have been placed with an ONG that was founded with the goal of helping the women of the community to successfully adjust during the transition from a planned economy to a market economy. The organization runs on money from grants, and projects range from community centers to demonstration plots. My role will be in the area of local economic development, but what exactly that will entail is TBD. For the first three months, I am to focus on further developing my language skills and learning as much as I can about the village and its people. This is in itself a challenge.

Reactions to my presence have been mixed. Some are very excited and curious. Others don’t understand how I can possible help, other than to perhaps find some American donors. And still others are simply indifferent. I will have to work on forming strong relationships with those who are glad that I am here, and all the while put out a positive image and work hard so as to convince some of the others that I can be of value.

My new host family is amazing. My mom is an accountant in Soroca, and my host father works in the Czech Republic. I have a host sister my age, who is currently living at home while trying to find work. This is a typical Moldovan family, unfortunately – one working abroad, one who can’t find work despite being well-qualified, and maybe one who is bringing in a little money at home. However, they are warm, welcoming, curious, and patient with me. They made me feel at home right away, and I’m so thankful that they are so helpful with the language. There is extended family dropping by a lot, which is nice. My host uncle is from Turkey, and his daughter, age 10, speaks 5 languages already! She comes over a lot, and never stops talking, which I suppose is good for me. Most host mom works for this brother-in-law from Turkey, who owns a business selling windows and doors. Last Friday I went with my sister to visit my host mom at work. Towards the end of the day, the aunt started up the barbeque, and we ended the week with a little turkish feast. As I sat there in the somewhat sketchy warehouse kitchen, eating strange food with 1.5 Turks and a handful of Moldovans, with no less than 5 languages being thrown about, I thought to myself, this is what I signed up for!

My dad came home this past weekend for a surprise two-week visit. This meant even more visitors than usual, and a whole lot of food. On Sunday I sat down at the table around 1:00 and remained there until 9:00. All sorts of people came by – relatives, neighbors, friends, even the town medical assistant made an appearance. Some stayed only an hour or two, others the entire day. The food was replenished often, and the drinks constantly (czech beer and house wine, can’t ask for any better than that!). There was some roudy singing and lots of laughing.

There are about 10 people who work at the town hall. I have now gotten to know them all somewhat, and have concluded that I will enjoy having them around for two years. My partner is only around once in awhile, as she has another job in Soroca. There is another lady, a social worker of some sorts, who shares the office with the NGO. At first I thought it would be a little crowed with three of us in a 6x6 office, but now I think I am quite fortunate that Doamna Enesia is there. This woman never stops talking! I would be totally bored were it not for her. She takes me around places, shares jokes, corrects my language, and explains things to me. A blessing for sure. And her 6-year-old, Victor, is adorable! Extremely smart, and friendly. We have done his homework together sometimes when he comes to see his mom after school, and I joke that he is my language teacher.

The other people at work are great too. Everyone is constantly going to each other’s offices just to chat and see what has happened in the twenty minutes since they were last there. My birthday was the second day that I went to work, and even though everybody had only known me for a day, they all come together to get me a rose and a few small gifts. I made chocolate chip cookies, and everyone crowded into my tiny office where we ate cake, cookies, and cheese pies, and drank some beer. I was very touched by and appreciative of their kindness.

I have begun to recognize other people in the village outside of work and family as well. Domnul Vasilie, who owns an orchard and exports his apples to Russia, who is always giving me a hard time. Doamna Efimia talks a lot and is very proud of her three boys. Domnul Polițist is ironically the one person in this town who I would pick to cause any trouble, but is in fact the lone police officer. And there is the old man with a friendly greeting as we cross paths every morning. I look forward to getting to know many more!

The school in my village only goes up to grade nine, and the kids don’t get to learn English, only French. So from the first day everyone has been asking me if I wouldn’t mind teaching a group of students English. Now I don’t know the first thing about how to teach a foreign language, and my Romanian isn’t even on par with that of the previously mentioned 6-year old. But apparently neither of these things are a problem for them, so with nothing better to do with my time at this point, I reluctantly agreed. Since I’m already getting tired of the stares from the kids as I walk past the school on my way to work everyday, I figured this could be a good way to get to know some of them and perhaps lessen the strangeness of my presence in this town. When I agreed, however, I didn’t realize that they wanted me to begin that very day. A group of teachers brought me into a classroom with 35 or so 11- and 12-year-olds, introduced me, and then left me there. What?! What the heck do I do now? I hadn’t planned a thing to do, nor had I rehearsed in my head how to say anything in Romanian. But I was able to think on my feet and make it through at least a half-an-hour successfully. I asked them why they want to learn English, and what topics specifically they wanted to learn. I told them a bit about myself, and asked them their names. The first four girls all said, “My name is Doina,’ and I thought, ‘great, they’re already playing jokes on me.’ But in fact, all four of them are named Doina. Excellent, easier for me. I ended, at their request, by teaching them common greetings. As terrified as I was (why do I care what 12-year-olds think of me??), I was quite proud of myself afterwards. And the next day, while returning to work after lunch, Serghei greeting me with a confident ‘good afternoon!’

There are three paved country roads leading away from my village that are good for running. One of them crests a hill and offers a spectacular view of Soroca and Ukraine across the river. The other day I was running on said road and passed an old man grazing his cows on the side of the road. He was still there as I was coming back, and as I approached I could tell he was going to speak to me. I slowed up and stopped my music, expecting a ‘what are you running from?’ or ‘aren’t you cold?’ But I heard something about ‘ran in 10 seconds,’ so being curious, I stopped. He didn’t have many teeth, so I had to really concentrate and ask him to repeat himself a lot, but apparently back in the Soviet era he used to be a great runner and train for hours every day. He said he ran a 3k in 9min 16sec. That’s pretty fast. Then he went on spouting statistics about various Olympics and who could run 100m in under 10 seconds. Then he seemed to become a bit nostalgic. Who knows who I came across that day? He could have been quite the celebrated athlete in his day. I think he was glad to see someone who appreciated running as he did. And I too was glad know that not everyone here thinks I’m crazy.

Well, that's all for now. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

I never know how I manage to get from point A to point B, but somehow I do. Here I am, exactly one year after submitting my application to the Peace Corps, an official active volunteer. I can’t believe it’s already been 11 weeks since I arrived in this country that I will call home for the next 2 years. I have had some amazing experiences and made some incredible friends during the 10 weeks of training.

Some of my favorite memories will be of four of us who have taken to the sport of ‘super-adventuring.’ Basically, this entails exploring the area surrounding our community by either walking or running, with intermittent stops to climb trees, explore caves, hike up the side of ravines, chat with locals, avoid herding sheep or stray cows, jump over ditches (with or without water), or beat each other with corn stalks. These super adventures may last anywhere from 1 to 4 hours, and common results include forehead gashes, mud-caked shoes, burr-covered spandex, and pure enjoyment of the beauty of Moldova’s land.

Getting to know our families has been a wonderful experience as well. We had an American/Moldovan dinner with all of the trainees in my village and their host families. Everybody brought a traditional dish to share, and the Moldovan families organized a few ‘challenges’ for us. The food was marvelous, although some of the American dishes didn’t turn out exactly as planned (ex. one trainee ended up with ketchup lasagna due to his inability to read the russian on what he thought was a jar of pasta sauce. It was delicious nevertheless.) My chocolate chip cookies were a big hit, of course. After dinner, elbows flew during the make-a-placinta-as-fast-as-you-can contest. This involved rolling the dough, adding the potato mixture, and properly forming the pie shape. This was followed by a shuck-the-corn-as-fast-as-you-can contest, in which I came in dead last. However, I redeemed myself when I was the winner by a long shot in the separate-the-corn-kernels-from-the-beans-as-fast-as-you-can contest. We also sewed buttons on to fabric and peeled potatos, in which I again came in last but received a consolation prize for having peeled the potato the most beautifully. The best part of these events was seeing how proud the host parents were of their respective Americans. Each Moldovan host mom wanted her American to win and some found ways to cheat and help. The games were followed by some singing and dancing. One dance was similar to musical chairs, except with partners. Couples dance until the music stops, and then everyone switches partners. The female who doesn’t find a partner has to dance with a broom until the music stops again. This ended up being quite the ego booster for the guys, as we girls fought over them so as to avoid the broom. All-in-all, the evening was a ton of fun.

A little over a month ago, some of us began taking some dance lessons in order to perform at our swearing in ceremony. The instructor was a riot, and pretty strict. Some of the gentlemen in our group had problems hopping on the beat, so he would just count really loudly over and over. And he’d run around adjusting our body parts rather firmly. Most of us were there for the sweet outfits that we got to wear at the ceremony. (See photo). At any rate, the end result was a crowd that went wild. Another cultural bonus was that the ten of us in my village also received some singing lessons. We learned a few traditional Moldovan songs and sang one of them at the ceremony, and the crowd again loved us. The best part was that I could see how proud of me my host mom was. She said I sang and danced beautifully, and we both teared up a little bit when I left for my new village.

Speaking of dancing, I finally made it to a Moldovan disco, twice in fact. Like in Austria, the party doesn’t start until well after 11 and lasts well into the wee hours. I never lasted any later than 2.30, but thoroughly enjoyed the time I was there. The Moldovans have an interesting style of dance - they keep their feet planted and kind of sway the hips and flail the arms about. I’m still working on that. The music is definitely techno, and I’m not sure if it was just at the disco in our village or if all discos are this way, but it seemed as though the dj only has about 15 songs, and they repeat after an hour or so. The girls wear short skirts with tall black boots, and the guys wear striped sweaters that are somewhat reminiscent of Cosby. Good times, good times.

As for the language, it is coming along well. I’m very comfortable with some topics, and less so with others, but I will survive. I’ve been able to start being somewhat humorous in Romanian, and locals do in fact understand what I’m saying. For example, the other day I kidded my host uncle about stealing a microwave from the kindergarten. (He was actually just borrowing it to help make the food for his daughter’s wedding the next day.) Last week we gave 20-minute presentations in pairs in Romanian, and I was able to deliver it without reading every single word off a piece of paper. I managed to find Harry Potter in Romanian, and I’m making my way through it slowly. And at the end of training I tested at the requested level in the language proficiency exam. But I have soooo far to go, because now that I am at site, I can’t speak English at all!

So pre-service training was pretty cool, and I have new amazing friends and families to help me get through the next two years. I’ve had a taste of life in Moldova, and now I’m sent off to experience it on my own. Now is when the real test begins, as I am the only American in a new village. I’ll have stories about that soon!

Moldova is pretty sweet. The land is beautiful, with many rolling farms. I’ve spent a lot of time starting out of the window while traveling, as well as running around exploring with a few fellow trainees. I always want to see what’s over the next hill! The people here are curious and generous, and my host family is wonderful. The villages may have one or two paved roads, and the rest are dirt (or mud, currently). Some homes have running water, others draw from wells. Animals of all sorts roam the streets. It’s still a bit odd to walk out the front door and see a cow tied to the fence down the street. And cow crossings sometime stop traffic on the main highway running out of Chisinau (the capital). The rutieras, a popular method of transportation, are good for an adventure every time. They are mini-buses/large vans that pick-up and drop-off pretty much anywhere you want along a set route. In the beginning, if we managed to get one to stop, it was just as tricky to make it stop. We all would just sort of start yelling ‘aici’ (here!) when we were close to where we thought we were going. Three of us actually got a round of applause once for successfully exiting a rutiera.

I’m currently in the midst of pre-service training, a 10-week period of intensive language, technical, and safety training. There are 38 of us total, and I am with 9 others in a small village for language classes. My small group is composed of some truly great people. We giggle all the time and belly-laugh a lot. Language classes are about 4 hours each day, and the afternoons are cultural or community integration activities. We also travel to another village to come together as a large group for administrative sessions, and we’ve had a few interesting field trips. The language is coming along pretty well, and I like it a lot. I had my first test a couple of weeks ago when we all had to go visit our future work sites and meet our partners.

After just four weeks of language classes and getting used to how things work in Moldova, we were given a set of directions and a name and phone number and were expected to show up to meet this person and spend the next three days with them. No prob. With a bit of difficulty at the bus station in Chisinau, I got on the right bus toward my future home. I even managed to get off at the right place, and make my way into the town hall to find the right person. There were four women crammed into a little office half the size of my bedroom back home. And they all began speaking very quickly, in Romanian. But with some discussion, blank looks on my part, and gesturing, we were able to communicate. The organization, comprised of three of the ladies, one computer, some books, and a fax machine, is operating with the goal of developing the local economy through helping small businesses. I spent the three days eating a lot, meeting lots of people, and getting to know my new host family. (I had the choice of three families, each of whom I met for about 5 minutes, so really, it was eeny-meany-miney-moe). My host mom is an accountant and very chatty. Her husband is currently working in Czech Republic, and her daughter, who is my age, will be leaving soon to work in Turkey. I spend the entire weekend conversing, and I never spoke in English! I was pretty proud of myself, but at the end, I was exhausted. I’m not ready for that full-time yet, and I was glad to come back to my little bastion of PST and here stories from all of the other trainees.

My host mom is a fabulous cook, and she’s showed me how to make a few of the traditional moldovan dishes, like ‘placinta,’ which are pastries (more like pasties, actually) filled with potatoes, or meat, or cheese, or when I’m lucky, pumpkin. My mom also bakes bread on Saturdays, using a fire-oven. The yard is full of veggies and fruits of all kinds – broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, peppers, tomatoes, apples, raspberries, grapes, quince, and so much more. There are two dogs, lots of chickens and ducks, and there was a rabbit, but we ate it a couple weeks ago. I think there might be more around somewhere. There is a big cellar with two large barrels of wine a dozens of jars of pickled veggies for winter.

Last Friday I went to the sauna with my host ma and some of the ladies from the village. I got into a rather long and heated conversation (in Romanian) with two of the ladies about why I would want to come to Moldova. Based on my six weeks here, the aspect about Moldova that makes me sad is that 25 % of the population lives abroad. People don’t want to live here because it is so difficult to find good jobs. Even people with a medical degree may be better off going to do housework in Italy. Many children grow up without one or both parents because they are working abroad trying to support the family. So these women couldn’t understand why I would leave a place where I have everything to come here. And if there are one million people living abroad, what can I possibly do to make them want to come back? Of course I’m not here to solve all the problems of the whole country, and even now my job description is a little fuzzy. But for now I loving the cultural exchange.

I’ve had the great fortune of being able to attend both a cunonie, the church part of a wedding, and a nunta, the reception part, which are typically held on separate days. The orthodox ceremony is very ritualistic, involving crowns, candles, a picture of Jesus, and lots of chanting. Instead of the maid of honor there is a sponsor couple, who advises them before and during the marriage and act as godparents for the children. The nunta is much like our receptions, except a bit more lively perhaps. There is lots of yelling, lots of drinking, and tons of homemade deliciousness. I’ve also had the fortune of attending two hrams. Hram is sort of the birthday of the village, and every year the people celebrate by cooking elaborate spreads of food (we’re talking stacks of dishes on the table) and people from all over come to visit throughout the day and eat and talk. In the evening is the joc, or dance with a live band and traditional music and dancing. The main dance is the hora, in which people hold hands in circles and do different steps while moving to the right. It’s pretty easy and pretty fun, but if the circle is too small you can get dizzy quickly. Other great things about Moldova: I love the how some parts of the ‘highway’ have only three lanes total, and the middle lane goes both ways. I love how the dogs walk about the villages like they have important destinations. I love how we all wear slippers in the house all the time. I love the traditional music and dancing. I love sarmale (cabbage stuffed with a rice/meat/veggie mixture). I love how I’m used to doing my business in a hole in the ground. And I think there are many more things I will come to love over the next two years.