I've been home for a few months now. Life is moving much faster it seems, and I find myself missing the quiet village life. The school where I taught has finished its construction on the new kitchen we fund raised for. The kitchen staff and students are now able to use the equipment our project budget bought and the students are eating full healthy meals everyday. I am so proud of my school and the progress it has made and look forward to the day when I can go back and visit to see all the progress my students will have made in their lives. Here are some pictures of the new kitchen sent to me by my friend and site mate Adam Troy:

Here is my host mama Olga on the swing. This was a fun day. We took the kids to two museums, the zoo, and an amusement park.

Here are some pictures of our day visiting some of the most beautiful monasteries in Moldova.

The Village Project has been successfully completed. Peepville was developed into a thriving village complete with all the necessary public buildings, government officials, a Buddhist/Orthdodox/Catholic religious center, roads, a lake, monuments, and all. I am very proud of all of the 16 students who participated in the creation of Peepville. We worked hard and learned the importance of civic participation and had some fun doing it. All in all the project was a great success!

In conjunction with the new kitchen and canteen project, we organized some health and hygene seminars for the entire school. Each student attended one of these seminars given by our health volunteer, Adam Troy, and the school nurse, Ms. Ala. At the end of each seminar the school director and I addressed the students about how many people have donated their money and time for them to have the oppotunity to eat a healthy meal each day at school. We spoke about their responsibility for making healthy choices themselves and for helping maintain the upkeep of their new canteen. There were also food prep hygene seminars given to all of the kitchen staff. We are very excited about this project, and thankful to all who have donated. If you have not yet, please go to the website listed below to read more about the project and make a tax deductible donation. We are very close to full funding, and a few more small donations would give us that extra push to full funding.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=261-210

We've finished development on our private lots. We've voted on what we want to develope in our public space. The contractors put in their bids on public space lots for building public buildings and the council and president have voted on the winners. Contractors have begun written and signed their work contracts and begun development of the public space in Peepville. Now we need to learn about taxes and start the process of living in our new mini-town. Maybe some of our Peep citizens will start business. Maybe they'll want to go to school, or start families. Time will tell......

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As part of the 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps celebration, each day of this 50th year of Peace Corps a volunteer celebrates at their work-site. For my day I taught each of my classes about Peace Corps and quizzed them about the lesson for prizes. They enjoyed it, learned a lot and won some fun Peace Corps prizes.

I was invited to dinner for a neighbor's birthday celebration. She is a very sweet and talented lady. She specializes in Moldovan handicrafts.

Nadia with her son Nicu. He's my running partner sometimes.

Her chickens were hatching.

My host family had bought rocks to put in their roads a while back and some people from the village offered their trucks to help us bring the rocks to the roads in my host's neighborhood. I got to help lay the rocks in the roads. A fun day of good village infrastructure work. This is now much better than themud they usually have to drive and walk through.

At the end of our work day, Doamna Maria invited us in for a little wine, and then sent us off with some fresh eggs. My host mom just kept saying, "as if we don't have enough eggs, haha".

This one has a pond and a nice big garden. I pass it, and Ms. Armenia, everyday on my way to and from work. She is always working on something. You can see her laundry bucket sitting there, she was hand waching the sheets that day.

If you agree that the conditions of our school's kitchen need improving, please click the link below and read about our project, and if you have the means, please donate. The students and I, at the Alexandru Donici Lyceum (Elementary, Middle School, and High School) truly appreciate any help we can get on this kitchen and canteen repair project:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=261-210

The Hora is the traditional Moldovan dance done at almost all celebrations and parties. This is a video of the students at the school where I teach English doing the Hora at our Valentine's Day celebration. Just click on the link to see the video.

http://www.facebook.com/v/871068390025

We've layed our foundation and voted on a design for our money. Now we just have to print our money and divide it up so that we can begin buying the materials to start construction on our personal property.

This is me and my partner with some of our village's participants.

This is the design that was voted for to be our "villis" (Peepville banknotes).Here are some other designs the students came up with:Here the students and I are working on dividing Peepville's land between privat and public spaces. The elected ministers of land drew up the land plan for division of private space, and we are helping them with the drawing of the floor plan.

Crăciun Fericit!My host mom with is a class master at my school and her 6th grade class put on a nice Christmas play. All of the classes also performed songs and dances. These Moldovan kids are very talented in the performing arts!Baba (Old Lady) Mariana

Our Village project is really coming along. I have a great partner helping me facilitate the project, one of my students and now good friend, Olesea, a 12th grader at my school. Each student along with my friend Adam, (my Peace Corps volunteer site mate in our village) and I, have made our peeps (the small village community citizens). Each of us has made a biography for each of our peeps and the newly created peep citizens have voted on the name "Peepville" for our town. Each peep has its own unique history, personality and profession and I think that our diverse group of Peepville citizens will make for an interesting experience of living in Peepville. Here are some scenes from Peepville's development up to now: Some of Peepville's active and thoughtful citizens, from left to right: Guillherme Miguel Pereira (a world renowned champion Brazilian soccer player), Tony Hawk (an architect and doctor), and Tamara Bordeaux (a professional surfer), who just moved to Peepville from France because she was experiencing some discrimination for being Roma (a.k.a Gypsy, although, as the Peepville citizens are learning as well, the term Gypsy is not preferred by the Roma ethnic group).

The list of our national and village laws.

We have also begun printing money to be divided among the peep citizens and we have layed the foundations and designed a village plan to begin purchasing materials and construction of our individaul houses. Once the houses have been constructed and each of our peeps has a comfortable place to sleep we will begin developing Peepville's public space and soon we will be elcting Peepville's government officials.

Pictures and biographies of our peeps.

Please help us to make our civics education project successful by making a tax deductible donation through this website: http://engagedcitizens.org/

Once you enter your financial information there should be a blank window where you can write"Moldova" or "Together for Active Citizenship".

Thank you for helping to promote active citizenship in Moldova. Stay tuned for pictures and information as my school's project unfolds.

I, along with a partner from my community, and some major translation help from my host brother, wrote a grant proposal to Small Projects Association, which gets its funding from USAID.

We won three thousand dollars to build an aqueduct and pump to pump water up to my neighborhood here in Moldova. The households in this area were running very low on water and many still do not even have running water because of the shortage. Now that we have begun construction all of the households included will now be able to have running water and enough water for irrigation in their home gardens. Men, women and children have been out working hard to make this happen. Everything is done by hand so its a lot of work. It has been so inspiring to see people engaged in the improvement of infrastructure in their own community.

Every couple of hours or so someone from the neighborhood would bring out some small glasses of cold wine or a plate of snacks so that everyone who was working cold rest and cool off a bit.

Also, one household would always provide lunch for everyone involved. Nothing like a nice Moldovan masa (meal) in the middle of a hard work day.

My hardworking partner Ştefan on the left. None of this would have happened had he not put in the long hours of work a research .

The "Village" is a project for hands on civic education. The project was started in the U.S. and has been successful in other countries in Eastern Europe including Poland and Bulgaria. Two motivated and innovative Moldovan women who head up an NGO called Speranta, and direct an elementary school in the south of Moldova are now introducing the project to Moldova with hopes to make it a part of the national school curriculum. These two women, along with their partner Peace Corps volunteer, have won funding from CEC (Citizens for Engaged Communities), to start the initiative in Moldova.

I was invited, along with a partner from the community where I volunteer, by a fellow Peace Corps volunteer who works with the two women from the Speranta NGO, to participate in the ten day "Village" training camp. I went with a Romanian teacher from my school to get the training we needed to do the project with students from our school.

There were about 20 other participants, which included other Peace Corps volunteers with their Moldovan counterparts. Together we created a mini-village with small village citizen dolls we represented, called peeps. My peep is shown below. His name is Nacho and he is a retired wrestler. He is now a staunch pacifist and environmentalist. Nacho was a strong supporter in the village for the building of the Buddhist temple as well as the Orthodox church so that all of the citizens' religions could be represented and all could have a place of worship who wanted one.

During the training we learned what we would be doing with the students in our own communities. We voted on a form of government. We divided up public and private land. We made village money. We constructed our houses on our private property and then constructed public buildings and developed on public space as well as reserved space as green space. Essentially we learned all that goes into civic participation and creating laws, etc.

Because the training was only ten days, and the most important part for us was learning exactly how to facilitate the project for our students, we did not have much time to take part in creating businesses and trading, and just living our lives out as our peeps in the village. That is what we will be doing with our students though.

When the school year starts, in our respective schools, we will be picking groups of students from grades anywhere from 5th to 9th. Generally its best with the younger grades, but it also depends on your school. I think in my school for instance we will have some students from 6th, 7th and 8th grades to comprise our "village" group.

Needless to say, we learned a lot during our training and we can't wait to begin the project with our own students and watch them learn real civics through the actual hands on creation of their very own mini-society.

Me with my village peep, Nacho.

The village has its own measuring system, called villi-meters. Each villi-meter is four centimeters. The scale of the village is 1:25 in comparison to real life.

Heads of the Speranta NGO and "village" training camp facilitators.

This was the plan I came up with for our village. I thought it was pretty good.

Another PC volunteer and I decided to share our privates space and make our house a duplex so that we could take advantage of our space and make our area more green. As we were building our screened in porch we had a visitor.

My partner Marcela making our village hospital. Her peep was the doctor.

Our visitor. She could sense how environmentally friendly our house was.

Taking another vote.

A little rest after a long day of village construction.

I loved my house, wished it was mine in real life.

Our beautiful Buddhist temple.

The recycling center.

Our zoo next to the river.

I think we were all very proud of the way our village ended up. Now its time to do the real thing with our students. The project will last 9-12 months with the students as an after-school activity. Stay tuned for pictures and updates from my community's school village project. Its going to be great!

Each village, town and city has its Hram. This is the celebration of the village on its saints day. there are lots of events all day for the kids. Wrestling matches with prizes including a turkey, a sheep, and the 1st place prize of a ram. Then at night its time to party and there is a concert and room for a lot of dancing. I got to do my share of the traditional Moldovan dance; the Hora. First we had the Sfintul Gheorghe (Saint George) Celebration at home. A lot of good food and wine.

It seems as though the kids couldn't wait for there turn to get on that mat a wrestle themselves.

I didn't get to film once they really started wrestling this is just the beginning. The 1st place winner got a Ram.

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Concert

I was invited to be a guest at my friend Marcela's house. It was a great time. They sure know how to treat a guest here in Moldova. We ate good homemade soup made from homegrown ingredients, and drank homemade wine. Good times.

The gorgeous bread baked at home.

One big Turkey!

And her big eggs.

Another scary goose (one bit me once).

Another turkey lurky lurky.

Where the bread is baked.

Congratulations to my 7th graders! They worked hard and won the Pizza Party!

I had a competition among all of my grades, 4 through 11. They accumulated points by being attentive, participating in the lessons, being on time to class, and turning in all of their homework. My super star 7th grade won this competition so we ate some big pizzas which I prepared with the help of the kitchen staff at my school. Next time I think we'll do an ice cream social; much easier, and just as fun.

About a week after Easter there is yet another very important, and very interesting Moldovan tradition; Praznic. This is a one or two day event (depending on how many cemeteries you have family buried in), when everyone goes to the cemetery to pay respect to their loved ones. I unfortunately missed the huge Easter celebration where the women plan and cook delicious food days in advance, and they paint all their eggs red. I was able to go to the cemetery though and I now am wishing we did something like this in my family. My host mom and her brother-in-law laying out the offerings in memory of the beloved Vasile Pojoga, who was my host dad's father.

The kids go around to all of the graves and get little treats in memory of that specific person. I even got a nice hand towel and some bread in memory of one of my students' great grand parents.

My host mom as she walks around the grave three times burning a special kind of plant for the deceased.

One of my partner teachers and her family as they visit with friends and family and eat their small feast by the grave sites.

After a lot of waiting and visiting, the priest has finally come to bless the dead.

Pouring out the wine in honor of Vasile Pojoga.

My neighbor Nastea and my host mom.

At the end of it all they give all of their offerings away to friends and family and eat their little picnic feasts.

After the cemetery we were invited for a large "masa" (table feast) in honor a woman's husband who has recently passed away.

Italy! We have arrived!

We started in Naples

An Easter parade.

The first Volcano I've ever seen. Very exciting.

My beautiful and amazing aunts whom I love dearly. Corliss and Maria, thank you for making Naples so much fun, you are the greatest.

Onto Rome.

Where Ben Hurr raced.

Quintin, I'm not sure why, but I think you'd like it in Rome. ;)

mmmm, gelato

My cousin Libby with her beautiful hair is one of my heroes.

The Vatican

The Swiss Guards

The beautiful art en-route to see the Sistine Chapel

And we've arrived at the Sistine Chapel..... where you are not aloud to take pictures.

I"Baba de Zapada". Its not a snow-man, it's an old snow-lady; a snow "baba".

For the New Year kids go door to door and sing New Years songs. They get a little money or candy from the neighbors they visit and sometimes they also collect the traditional Moldovan braided bread in the shape of a wreaths called "colach". These are some pictures of some of my students who came to my house. It was so fun to see them singing and playing instruments. My ninth grade students came in a big group playing the saxophone and batting on little drums. One of them danced around in the middle in a goat costume.

My host mom's students (which are also some of my students) preparing for the New Year's celebration.

Some delicious salads made by my host mom. Yes, that is pomegranate on the fruit salad, and yes it was delicious.

This is a video of some of the kids collecting the "colach" (bread wreaths).

This is video of the kids playing at my school. They smooth out paths to slide down in through the snow. Kids are fearless I tell ya'.

pAs we enter the ancient city, Petra Jordan.

We've made it to the last leg of our journey to relax in Dahab, Egypt.

This was the fun time I was having before my camel decided to bust free from the rope tied to my guide and make a b-line in the other direction. It ran for about 10 minutes in the opposite direction from my group until I yelled out as I passed a Bedouin camp and all the Bedouin men came running out to grab my camel. My poor guide buddy was chasing after me for about a quarter mile before he caught up to where the other guys grabbed my camel. He broke his sandal in the chase.

This week has been a long one. We have been having school on Saturdays to make up for the week we had off during the swine flu scare. So this Saturday during my fourth form lesson, I noticed that a few of my students, who seem to be at lower levels of English, actually do really well with more one on one attention. I offered to give them an extra lesson on Sunday and any student interested who over heard my offer begged me to work with them on Sunday as well, so we agreed on a time and we met today at the school. Here are pictures of my town, my school, my classroom, my students and my walk home from school. Today was a great day for pictures because their central market runs on Sundays so the town was hoppin.My school and some of my more devoted students.

And into my classroom....

Those are the colages I did with my English club. Okay so it was just me, one of my collueges and my one best 11th grade student who actually comes to my English club. But we had fun!

Some of my homemade materials. I will never claim to be do the best I can.

"Language is the key which unlocks the charm of the country and an understanding of the people"

"Village images from the vision of the children"A project my host mom did with some of the kids at our school. She is the art teacher and she had her students paint big pictures of the town and they have arranged them along the road to my school. This is one of my favorite things about my town. Though some vandals keep knocking them down, they always just put them right back up.

Somebody's turkeys

Another orthodox icon. Everytime they pass one they do the sign of the cross, and its done the inverse of the way Catholics do.

Primeria (Town Hall/Mayor's Office)

He must be selling something gooood.

And back to home sweet home,

cincizeci de grame, all the time

I want it to be known that I happen to have the most amazing 12th grade class ever. I could tell when I saw the beautiful celebration they organized for teachers' day. They can plan so well together and create anything they put their minds to I swear. It’s so interesting to me because the same students will be together from the first grade till they graduate high school here in Moldova, so they become so close, almost like a family. They know everything about each other and have been through so much together. I guess that's probably what makes them so good at working together.

The reason I am so motivated to speak of them today is because they helped me to re-create a Thanksgiving with them at the school. Each student brought something, and the boys that didn't, gave me a little money for the chicken and macaroni and cheese I made.

One girl made this huge, and fabulous cake, another made the traditional rice and cabbage rolls in grape leaves, and another made their traditional fried "placenta" (plachenta), which is thin bread wrapped around either cabbage, goat cheese or pumpkin and fried. They eat a lot of plachenta in Moldova, fortunately it is very delicious, especially the pumpkin one. Anyway, there was a lot of food and we had a great time, and just like Thanksgiving back home we all stuffed ourselves, just with different types of food. Oh, and one boy brought in Raspberry juice or "compot" which is a traditional conserved juice here, it had tons of raspberries in it, soooo good.

And there was much much more, I mean, just take a look at the pictures and see. They are such sweet kids!

Yeah, thats right, i'm makin moonshine.

No really my host mom is making it, and they call it 'racheu' round these parts.

I did add wood to the fire for a while, it was fun.

The fam eating the delicious 'roletas' that my host mamma baked. They are baked rolls of bread stuffed with cheese and potatoes, or cabbage and carrots, or apples. We had two of each kind, and lots of good 'ol house wine as well.

My host mom coming into my room to light my 'soba'. The soba is the small fireplace in that keeps me warm in these cold Moldovan nights.

Moving around or adding wood to the soba.

Thats me next to the soba.... "ok enough with the soba pictures already" you say? Okay, okay, i just really love my soba, and I'm proud that now i just go out, get wood, and start up my own soba fire when i get cold. I'm all growns up in Moldova.

Me and my host bro after a hard days work. Ok, not that hard, this was actually a short day for them, but it was just enough for me.

That's some beautiful Moldovan landscape there. My host mom on the right. Love her!

My awesome neighbor Nastea with the basket of grapes we were gonna take home to eat. The other thirty huge bags we picked were already on a truck headed home to be made into wine.

Host bro, displaying the gorgeous apples I eat everyday.

Look at all this cabbage. Yes! Now thats good eatin'. Right in my backyard.

There's a glare, but I'm holding a giant pear. Soooo good.

An abundance of giant pears.

These are filled with only a small fraction of the grapes my host family and I picked from their grape fields.

Soon to be delicious (ok, so-so) white house wine. Nice and tare though.

My host bro crankin away for hours. The beginning stages of wine.

Tatel meu (My Moldovan Dad) workin on his wine.

This is the dance we kept doing while we picked big dark purple grapes all day. So sweet and good, and even sweeter when we finished work.

Me n my Moldovan Mamma as she roasts peppers to preserve for the winter.

Look at my host dad up in the Pecan tree.

This Friday I went and picked pecans with my host parents. It was pretty fun, and funny to see my host Dad up in the tree shaking them out so my host mom and i could collect them. They taste good, and makes me want butter pecan ice cream, something i have not seen here.

A far away view of the new church under construction in my town.

Entrance to my house.

Other entrance to my house which leads to my room and also the 'casa mare', where they have their nice dinner parties. I think every Moldovan house has a room especially for large table dinner parties.

Floareasoarelui

A bunch of goats.

My first friends in my new town. Every time I pass their house on my way home from work and they are outside they invite me in and feed me tons of food. They are the cutest little couple ever. They live in this little house with low ceilings, it seems it was built for their size. They have a huge garden and tons of chickens, pigs, and rabbits. (they make a delicious rabbit dish here in Moldova. I got to eat it my first day with my last host family and I never knew it was soooo good) The woman on the left is an English teacher I work with. I walked home with her my first day.

This is the amazing Erika, who flagged down the bus she had been wanting to ride on for so long. It looked just like the Darjeeling Limited bus. It was pretty sweet.

Me and my trainee friends totally stoked to be on the Darjeeling Limited bus after a long hard day.

Playin some American football with my trainee buddies.

My host bro in at my last site. Burning trash I think.

My balcony, last site. Notice the grape vines growing off the right side of the house. They made the best wine.

Me at my last house.

My last host dad working on his truck.

My current host mom and dad, with my school director and her husband and son. This was during my visit to my permanent site while I was still in Pre-service Training.

The well and the huge garden at my last host family's house.

My current host mom and dad. Olga and Gheorghe, in their sunflower field.

The monastery and church in my current town.

Traditional Moldovan dance.

My host sister in the outside kitchen. My previous house.

My first host mom and dad.

A church in my last town. My PST town.

Me 'n' my host sis.

Just a random pretty house with the cool well.

'Casa Vechi' or 'Old House'. The house next to my house where my host dad's parents lived and where my host parents lived while they were building their current house, just to the left.

Mine and my last host mom's birthday 'masa'.

The side yard of a house I passed on my way to language class. It had a cool well.

Birthday table. Beautiful isn't it?

Another cool well.

Some of the many chickens I live with.

My host Mamma cooking up some tomato juice to can for the winter. We did this all day.

My current host mom outside my house.

Really big Zucchinis that were grown in the garden. My host mom says we can't eat them now, they are too big.

A picture of my previous host mom and dad on their wedding day. They are so cute! Notice no one smiles, and also note the gift to the bride and groom from the groom's mother to the left of the groom. I love this photo.

My peers and I from Romanian Language class, with our Romanian teachers and the man that played a mean accordion for us when we performed traditional Moldovan song and dance for our host families. We practiced hard for this day and I think we did alright.

Road to the next town from my PST town where I ran.

Final destination of my daily run.

My runnin partners. Thank you Bethany for your coaching!

The first day of school in Moldova is a day to remember. Everyone dresses in their sharpest black and whites. There are many speeches and many flowers handed out. I unfortunately, once again, did not bring my camera. My life does not even exist without my professional photographer cousin Quintin around. I had a teacher friend take some pics so hopefully I can post those soon. I received so many flowers and kisses on the cheeks from students that day, they really know how to make a teacher feel appreciated. Its a good thing considering the fact that teachers here make about a $4.50 a day. I could barely carry all those big red roses home.

I am so happy to have finished my nine weeks of Pre-service Training and to have been officially sworn-in as a Peace Corps Volunteer, although I did have some good times during PST. Getting to know my truly hospitable and cool PST host family was so much fun. My host mom Ecaterina turned forty a few days before I turned twenty-six. She ran the small family shop just up the hill from my house and also worked her but off at home, cooking, cleaning and taking care of the fam. Ecaterina can also assemble a Kalashnikov, all the girls learned at her high school, pretty cool huh? My host dad, Mihai, is forty and drives a truck. He drove that same truck in Russia when he was in the military. Mihai was very nice to me and always served me as much wine as i wanted, but I usually could not understand anything he said to me. He would always say something that seemed like it was probably very funny and everyone would laugh and so would I even though I didn't understand the joke, then he'd say, "did you understand?" and I'd say no. He also looks just like Cesar. My host sister Irina is nineteen and is currently attending a University in Chisinau for cosmetology and fashion design. My host bro Tudor is the sweetest fourteen year old boy I have ever met. My host mom and dad were constantly making him run and get this or that from the store or making him do some kind of housework, and he walked around with a constant melt-your-heart smile on his face. When he wasn't doing a chore, he was playing soccer, and i got to play with him a couple times which wore me out completely, he's fast! He even came and played some American football with me and a few other trainees. It was so fun, Tudor scored the first touchdown.

One of my highlights was when I got to go and help my family trim their grape vines in their plot of land about five miles drive from the house. Almost every Moldovan family has some plots of land where they may grow grapes for wine, or other fruits or vegetables, or sunflowers. My fam was big into the wine and went out to the vineyard and worked a few times a month. The day I finally convinced them to just let me go, and not worry about planning for my practice school lessons or study Romanian for one day, I was stoked. It was pretty lame that day, not hard at all, we just trimmed the vines that were too long for a few hours. The grapes were good though, and I told my mom I preferred drinking the wine. She laughed pretty hard at that.

During PST, I got to hang out with a cool young Moldovan family, learn a bit of Romanian, drink some very good (and very strong) house wine and eat a ton of delicious Moldovan cuisine. I also had some long and very informative technical sessions on teaching English, but I have to admit, that wasn't my favorite part. I personally preferred my chance at practicing the actual teaching of a Moldovan class during our three weeks of practice school. The drawn out lesson plans we had to write were not fun, but I absolutely love working with Moldovan kids.

I also made some great PC volunteer friends, who I think of as my family while here in Moldova. Its nice to have such great people you know you can count on. We can help each other out as we all face the ups and downs of our Peace Corps service together, so far away from our hometowns, friends and families.

All and all, my time here has been pretty amazing and I have only just begun my service.

Anyway... I'm gonna see about how to post some pictures now.