Turkey- round 2

Yay, so after Bulgaria we were off to Turkey! We have left Eastern Europe, finally!!!!! We spent the first few days in Instanbul with an amazing couple who's mom cooked us yummy Turkish food. Then we took an 11 hour bus ride to Amasya where we hiked around and enjoyed the mountain air (and a huge wind storm, along with no hot water). Since everywhere in Turkey is reached by a 10-12 hours bus ride we headed next to the region of Cappadocia on a 10 hour bus ride. There we stayed in the town of Urgup with a nice turkish guy who happened to be a travel agent and guide and helped us plan our few days there- which included a hot air balloon ride. From there we took a 12 hour us trip back to Istanbul for our flight to Israel. Originaly Israel wasn't in our itinerary but after researching flights we found it would be cheaper to fly to Tel Aviv and then take a bus to Jordan.

The Blue Mosque, Istanbul.

The Aya Sofia, Istanbul.

The mountains in Amasya.

The old Ottoman house in Amasya.

Amasya

Lift off.

Sharon and I.

My certificate I recieved after the balloon ride.

Our Thanksgiving dinner in the Istanbul airport.

3 days ın Bulgarıa

Met up wıth Sharon ın Buchurest, took a traın to Velıko Tarnovo ın Bulgarıa.

Searchıng for Dracula ın Transylvanıa

The fırst two weeks of my trıp start ın Dracula land!!! The area of Transylvanıa ın Romanıa ıs one of the most beautıful, fılled wıth mountaıns, castles, and storıes of Vlad Tepeş and dracula. Durıng my travles I read a bıography about Vlad Tepeş, the prınce of the Transylvanıa regıon ın the 15th century. He was nıcknamed the Impaler after hıs favorıte way of kıllıng enemıes. After readıng about Vlad I read Bram Stoker's Dracula. Both great books!!!

The whole two weeks ın Romanıa I stayed wıth people I found on couchsurfıng (www.couchsurfing.com). It ıs such a great way to travel. I dıdn't pay for accomodatıons once and stayed wıth really cool people ınstead- Romanıans and Amerıcan Peace Corps volunteers. The weather was great the entıre two weeks, clear skıes! Though wınter ıs settlıng ın and ıt ıs really cold, I am wearıng all my clothes.

Peleş Castle ın Sınaıa


Where VLad Tepeş's father lıved

Vlad Tepeş a.k.a Dracula ın Sıghışoara

Sıbıu, Romanıa

Sıbıu

Open aır museum near Sıbıu

Cluj-Napoca

Tımışoara

Yarn skills!

A super cool friend who also shares my love of knitting gave me some wool, a spindle, and how-to book before I left the States to fulfill my goal of learning to spin yarn. Here is what I produced.

Preparing to COS

Another acronym?! Ahhh, what's with these PCVs and their acronyms??? COS stands for Close Of Serivce. That means, done, all over, finished, coming home!!! I now have 2 days left of my service here in Moldova! Doesn't it feel like only yesterday you were saying goodbye to me? Well, maybe not yesterday, I definitely feel like I have been gone along time. Friends have gotten married, kids have been born, people have moved, things have changed. The world went on without me. What's it going to be like when I return, changed from my experience, to friends and family that have done so much in the past 2 years that I haven't been able to be a part of? Will life pick up from where I left it? What will I do? Where will I live?



As I am writing up all my reports, getting documents signed, getting medically cleared (it is as much work to leave PC as it is to enter) I am starting to wonder what the next step of my life will hold. I feel so lucky that I am at a point in my life where I am completely free to do WHATEVER I want. Literally, I can live where I want, work where I want, do what I want. How many times do we reach a time where we are not tied down to anything? I am so excited to come home and see what will happen next!!! See you all soon! December 17 11:30pm I will be in Seattle!

Vacation (part 2)

Alright, so the rest of my vacation was spent in Belgrade, Serbia; Montenegro; Croatia; Bosnia; and Italy. The whole thing was 3 weeks of amazingness. I traveled the first two alone and the last week with my mom and grandma. In these three weeks I hiked up mountains, jumped off cliffs into turquoise water, floated in the sea, ate delicious sea food, watch Croatia celebrate in the streets after a soccer win, and saw the Colosseum in Italy. It was a much needed trip out of eastern Europe. A funny thing I noticed is that when I would sign to my grandma I would be speaking Romanian, not english. When I would sign "yes" I would be saying "da" to myself. i can only assume this happened because both are stored in the foreign language section of my brain. It is like me confusing Russian with Romanian now when I speak with Moldovans, but this could be due to the fact that they interchange the two also.

Kotor, Montenegro

Budva, Montenegro Croatians celebrating after winning a football game.

Dubrovnik, Croatia
Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik

Mostar, Bosnia and Hercegovina

Outside of Mostar

Outside of Mostar. Tour group.

Sarejevo, BiH

Sarejevo

Rome

Grandma playing in the fountain.

Inside the colleseum.

Vacation!!!!!!

After almost 21 months of working in Moldova I am taking my last vacation. We are not allowed to travel in the last three months of our service and I had 18 days remaining so I decided to do one big trip and tour the Balkans. My trip started a week ago when I flew into Budapest, Hungary. It was a nice quick flight from Moldova, only an Hour and a half, on a small prop plane. My flight left Moldova a 5:45am. Since I had to be at the airport at 4am I had to stay in the capital the night before and wakeup at 3am to get ready and catch a taxi to the airport. Knowing I had to be up that early I couldn't seem to fall asleep the night before and got 0 hours of sleep before my flight. I arrived in Budapest at 6:15am and was completely exhausted. My plan was to meet up with a girl from couchsurfing.com and stay with her but I couldn't get in touch with her and spent my first hour in the city searching for internet and then a hostel. By the time I checked into the hostel it was around 9am. I found out the girl working there was from Romania and she was quite surprised I spoke Romanian. But by the time I put my bags down and crawled into a bunk to snooze I was so energized about being someplace new that I couldn't sleep and only ended up laying there for an hour until I finally got up and decided to tour the city. As someone going off no sleep I got around most of the city the first day. I did happen to find a huge park though that I laid down in for a rest in the sun. That night I was totally ready to sleep good and hard after being awake close to 38 hours. But guess what? Guess how good I slept? HORRIBLE! I think I was way too tired and too worried about actually getting sleep plus the walls of the hostel were paper thin and I could hear everybody that came and went. When I "woke" the next morning after very few hours of sleep I felt a little delirious and my eyes hurt so badly. So instead of walking the rest of the city I hadn't seen yet I decided to go chill out at the famous thermal baths. It was amazing!! There were huge pools indoor and outdoor full of natural warm water. I stayed there for hours just floating and relaxing, letting the jets massage my back and neck. That night I had planned on taking a night train to Bosnia but I found out that there is only a day train and I didn't want to waste a day traveling so I took a night train to Belgrade, Serbia instead, a city I originally planned to see but cut out at the last minute. So I was looking forward to anther night of bad sleep, especially because I didn't want to fork up the extra money for a sleeper car.

Wedding (year 2)

So once again it is wedding season!!! As soon as easter is over and nobody has to fast anymore the weddings start. I was invited to one last month by my new counterpart, her cousin was getting married. I went all out on this wedding and got my hair and make-up done and bought a new dress. The wedding was so much fun!!! I danced all night and finally gave up and went home at 2:30am even though it was still going on strong. my feet just couldn't take it anymore. At one point I had a guy ask me to dance to the fast music and he tried twirling me all over the dance floor and ended up just getting his toes stepped on a bunch. I can't help it if we don't grow up learning to dance like that.

BBQ-ing and Victory Day (May 9th)

May 9th is a big holiday in Moldova. It celebrates the end of WWII. And Moldovans use it as another excuse to celebrate and not work or go to school. There was a parade and concerts in my city all day long. It was very soviet affair with them carry the soviet union flag in the parade.




So my new found friends, he ones from easter who have adopted me into their family invited me to a BBQ 2 weeks later for victory day. Since they were providing all the food I felt I had to contribute something so I brought marshmallows and taught them all how to make smore's. Oh did they love them!!!! I also brought them their very own frisbee!!! Here are some fun pictures.

Easter (year 2)

Food, food, and more food!!!

Jason helped collect the goats from the fields at the end of the day.

Playing volleyball between stuffing our faces.

In the beci (pronounced baytch, like the cuss word but means cellar) drinking house wine.

Once again we celebrated easter Moldovan style. Only this time Jason was in the country to celebrate it and we spent the weekend at my new counterpart's grandma's house. (Side note: I have left my counterpart and NGO in the village since all she wanted me to do was teach english and wouldn't involve me in any of the stuff I was sent there to do. My new counterpart is super cool and only 20!) So we spent the weekend there eating way too much food, drinking way too much wine (vodka for Jason), and having tons of fun. I brought my frisbee along and taught them all how to play frisbee. It was a nice break to work all that food off. Here are some of the pictures. There was lots of family there and they were all really excited to meet the Americans and were all very impressed I speak the language. (I heard a few days later from one of my site mates that she heard from someone at work that heard from someone else that their friend had 2 Americans over to their house for easter!)

I've Moved!!!

For the first time in my life I am living alone. Completely alone! And I love it! I finally decided it was time to move out of my host family's house and live on my own. I found an apartment in the center of the city, I mean right in the center, on the main pedestrian walkway. I have updated my new phone number in the contact info on the left (if for some reason someone wants to call me).

The Moldovan Sauna Experience

What is the first thing that comes to mind when I say sauna??? Is it sitting in the sauna at your local gym for 10 minutes after your work out? Or do you see a spa retreat by yourself or with a couple close friends? But in either of the visions is it a personal experience, I mean one that doesn't involve a lot of people or a lively atmosphere? And how often do you sit in a sauna and for how long? Maybe once a year for 10 minutes? Well my friends, I am hear to inform you that I go to the sauna every Thursday afternoon with a group of 6-7 women for three hours. And it isn't a quite pampering time. We bring food, beer, homemade scrubs and masks, and stories of our weeks.

Moldovans (and many Eastern Europeans) see the sauna as a social hour (or three or four). They invite all their friends, strip down to their birthday suits (if you are with the same sex), set out a huge masa (in a different room of course), and sweat it all out for multiple hours. Sauna day is the day I look forward to all week. It is a time when I can go relax and shoot the shit with a group of wonderful women. We start by sitting in the sauna for 45 minutes to an hour, with short breaks in between to jump into the cold pool to cool down. Then we head to the room upstairs to eat and talk for 20 minutes (they drink beer, I drink water-don't want to get too dehydrated). Then we head back into the sauna and start preparing our different masks and scrubs. When we (Becky and I) started going to the sauna we were told each week a different way to prepare our homemade scrub. First it rubbing salt all over your body followed by honey for moisture. The next week we were told salt isn't good because it dries the skin out and that we should mix honey, olive oil, and cornmeal for a great scrub. The third week we were told coffee, sea salt, honey, and oil was the best scrub to make. After all the advice we had received (and of course are still receiving) we have settled on warming the honey in the sauna then mixing it with cornmeal and olive oil. It has worked as a great exfoliant so far. So we apply masks and scrubs for an hour or so before rinsing off and just relaxing in our last hour.

When I first heard about volunteers that had gone to the saunas in Moldova I was a little terrified. My first story was of a volunteer who was dragged to the sauna with his counterpart, made to strip down, sat sweating and drinking the mandatory alcohol (i.e. vodka), and was eventually made to lie down on his stomach while his counterpart beat him with branches. Sound scary????? Well, he loved it!!! The beating of the branches I came to learn is really enjoyable. WHAT?!! Did I just say that?! It's true. What it is is a bunch of smallish branches (with their leaves still attached) tied together, dried, and then dipped in a bucket of warm water. The beater then whacks away at your back, the sticks padded by all the leaves. The leaves are very warm due to sitting in the bucket of warm water warmed in the sauna. The beater can actually whack the beatee pretty hard without it hurting at all. Sometimes we purchase this...hmm, what to call it?...bundle of branches?...and spend time beating eachother's backs, thighs, and feet.

After our three hours we shower, get dressed, and go home. The sauna is very clean (though we all wear our flip flops) and is a normal part of Moldovan life. Many of the saunas get booked up for holiday parties and many people have weekly reservations for the same day and time every week. Unfortunately though the weather is getting warmer and we will soon be ending the weekly tradition for the summer months. However, I hope to build my own sauna back in the States and have weekly sauna "parties".

My Creative Side