Merry Christmas to all my friends and family back home. I am very excited to say that this will be my last Christmas away from home. As a Christmas treat here are a few interesting things about Christmas in Moldova. - A vast majority of Moldovans are Orthodox Christians and mainly celebrate Craciun vechi (Old [...]
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One thing that always truly leaves me amazed when abroad is the cultural impact the United States leaves on almost every country throughout the planet. Our popular culture (mainly movies and music) and language have penetrated into remote villages from South America to mountain villages in Tajikistan. I worked at a summer camp for kids [...]
Moldovans are pretty proud of their wine making tradition, and is still an activity many rural families will take part in. For my American audience, I want to clear one thing up. This is not your sophisticated glass bottle of wine requiring a corkscrew. This is your homemade, filled in 3-year-old plastic water bottles and [...]
One of the great joys of living in Moldova is fresh fruit and vegetables. A tomato here makes what we have at home unworthy of the name. Our tomatoes at home are giant, water-filled, and tasteless balloons by comparison. Now, before I go on, I am not trying to advocate any all organic diet, or [...]
Yesterday, I met Vasiya. I had actually met him on many occasions before, but then he was just the disheveled, overworked, drunk, homeless looking man who may or may not have had some mental issues. He lives out on the very edge of the village, and would often stop me on one of my runs. [...]
First, I want to thank everyone who helped me with my basketball court,especially my town’s new mayor. She will most likely never read this, but without her, this would not have been a reality. I would also like to thank the International Women’s club of Moldova who gave us a grant to build this court [...]
The buses left from Syntagma Square at 5:30 am. Most people don’t want to even see 5:30am let alone get up at that time with the knowledge that they will then be running 26.2 miles. For your first marathon, nothing is more intimidating than following the route by bus beforehand. For 45 minutes we seemed [...]
Often on some of my longer runs the thought would cross my mind that running a marathon is something inherently contradictory to the American psyche. I realize how cliché it sounds to typify Americans as impatient, always on the move, short attention span, in need of quick results, etc. In fact, maybe this is just [...]
Hey y’all. It has been quite a while, I know, but in the holiday spirit, and thanks to the sun setting at 4 pm, I have decided to do 25 blog posts between now and Christmas to update you on the last 5 months of my Peace Corps experience and living in Moldova. So, for [...]
Wax. After a good year in Moldova, that particular word had never came up and now I was searching frantically through my dictionary to come up with what exactly wax is in Romanian. I spent a few days as a translator for a Dutch bee keeping expert who was in my village for a week [...]
“Whatcha got ain’t nothin new. This country’s hard on people, you can’t stop what’s coming, it ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.” – Ellis in No Country for Old Men It has now been over a year since I left the greatest city human history has ever seen, Cincinnati, left behind my friends and [...]
Hram is a celebration in Moldova that is unique for each village or city in Moldova. I would characterize it as the “village birthday”. It is actually the saint’s day, or the feast day associated with the village. My village’s hram is on St. Nicholas’ feast day. I have been to a couple hram’s this [...]
It has been quite awhile since I have posted, though I will only take half blame for this. My computer’s battery broke and I was computer-less for around a month. Though it was slightly refreshing to live in a world without computers, tv, iphones, and ipods, it was mainly boring and made the days drag [...]
Happy March Madness all of you. I would like to thank the good people of CBS for keeping me in a near comatose state last weekend as I watched numerous hours every day of all the march madness action on crystal clear streams on the CBS website. To add to the gluttony of hoops, I [...]
This past friday, was the first time in the 19 year history of the Republic of Moldova that a president or vice-president of the United States has visited the country. As volunteers, we had the privilege of attending the speech and then going to a meet and greet afterwards. It was a pretty awesome day [...]
When my host father was my age the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union was marked by the Miracle on Ice in a little town called Lake Placid by a group of young, American hockey players. He spent the prime of his life working in a kohoz or collective farm. Today, he told [...]
no, it just means you never got the privilege of working a cincinnati recreation summer camp job, which is the only place I have ever played the game.
Am I really an American if I have no idea what poisonberry is? Never heard of it!
It is March, and snowy and freezing in Moldova. Winter has worn out its welcome. Anyway, here is my sports club. I do it once a week for some of the kids in my community and we place games like dodgeball, kickball, poisonberry, and other american games. Enjoy!
Sometimes, vacations can be too good. This might have been one of those instances. I have just returned back from traversing a solid 1000 miles through the northern golan heights, down to the negev desert, from the coasts of the mediterranean sea to the ancient city of Petra in the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan. A [...]
Buna!
I was a PCV in Romania and I've COSed now. However, I'm in grad school and I'm doing a "country study" on Moldova. I never went there and don't know much about it at all.
I was wondering if you could answer some questions for me or put me in contact with some of the HCNs or staff people at PC Moldova.
Thanks!
Mersi frumos,
Julie Ceigler
That is great Sam. (Unless you are a New Zealand White.)...Dad
WOW!! how appropriate since this is the Chinese year of the Rabbit. Mom
After many months of planning, working, and preparing my partner and I have won our first grant! We will be starting a demonstration rabbit farm, and be essentially breeding rabbits and helping farmers in our village start a small rabbit farm. We will be bringing a superior breed of rabbit, the new Zealand rabbit, to [...]
I know this post will end up being a bit of a downer, but I think it is definitely something that we should at least be aware of. Especially since when people think of human trafficking they think of prostitution.
I love the song and music. I can't wait to visit Moldova!! Love Mom
This is a seriously good song/music video from what I consider to be the best current Moldovan music. The song, Buna Dimineata (Good Morning), is pretty solid, but the video, full of old video footage from Moldova in the soviet era, as well as shots made to look as if they were similarly as old, [...]
Hello everyone, I have been very busy over the last few months building castles in the clouds. I have also been very silent about these projects because I didn’t want to go into much detail or explanation before we put foundations (i.e. funding) under some of these castles. For me, this seems to be a [...]
Dear Mrs. Ruwe’s Class, Thank you so much for your letters and support. They brightened my day when I received them, and I look at them whenever I need a smile. I enjoyed all your decorations, I love Cincinnati sports, and it made me happy to hear all about Elder, the Reds, and the Bengals.I [...]
So I am just sitting at work, minding my own business when an old hunched over woman, maybe maxing out at 5 feet, decked out in her head scarf and shawl, comes wandering into the office. Next thing I know, she is throwing handfuls of grain at me saying salutations for the new year, and [...]
I believe my first exposure to the concept of work and travel was through an NPR program “This American Life”. One of their stories was an account of a group of late teen’s from some post-soviet republic who worked in one of those mega rest stops, you know the kind with a Sbarro and maybe [...]
life is pretty crazy. been quite a while since I have spent a new year’s in my beloved city. Last year was in New Orleans on Bourbon Street for the Sugar Bowl, the year before was a tiny village in Paraguay, and this year I will be enjoying the new year on independence square in [...]
I may be a man, but I still have the imagination of a 6 year old. Lately, I have been mentally fluctuating between two literary worlds, putting myself in these imaginary lands to help pass the time. The first is that of a book I am currently reading, The Road (I underlined the book title [...]
Happy St. Andrew’s day! I am sure you are all celebrating this joyous day right now. Wait, that’s right, no one celebrates or probably even knows about St. Andrew’s day in America. Well as part of your Moldovan Cultural lesson for the week, I will inform you about St. Andrew’s day. First, let me confess [...]
6 months. 6 months ago, I stepped on a plane at CVG airport and said goodbye to everything I knew. Little did I know that would be the last time for a long time I could enjoy the luxuries of being able to listen to the conversations going on around me without a thought, or [...]
google “american food” or “american dishes”. Outside of hot dogs, hamburgers, and barbeque you want find much. However, one of the uniquely awesome things about America is that we are a melting pot of cultures, and we have taken a lot of different culinary traditions and put an american twist to them. One of those [...]
Look!, A day after Thanksgiving, some lovely snowfall. If it is going to be cold, it might as well be pretty. Also, [...]
If you don’t count grant writing of course. My Public Achievement group started this week. 9 9th graders (a little over half the 9th graders in my village). So far, my moldovan partner for the project has taken control and is doing an excellent job, the kids seem interested, and I think it may be [...]
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