Jennifer's Adventures

Turkey- round 2

2008-12-03T19:32:00.010+02:00

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

2008-11-23T19:34:00.007+02:00

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

Searchıng for Dracula ın Transylvanıa

2008-11-23T18:49:00.013+02:00

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!

2008-10-21T16:32:00.006+03:00

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

2008-10-02T12:40:00.002+03:00

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)

2008-10-02T12:32:00.001+03:00

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!!!!!!

2008-06-14T22:02:00.003+03:00

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)

2008-06-14T21:57:00.003+03:00

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)

2008-06-14T21:54:00.006+03:00

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)

2008-06-14T21:47:00.005+03:00

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!!!

2008-04-15T16:41:00.004+03:00

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

2008-04-15T16:09:00.002+03:00

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

2008-01-25T14:37:00.000+02:00

Vacation!!!!

2008-01-24T15:16:00.000+02:00

So you’ve all heard my theory that to stay sane here you must take vacation every 2-3 months. So far I have succeed in doing this and am happily sane. Shortly after New Years Jason and I hopped a bus to northwestern Ukraine. It was a 12 hour bus ride to Lvov (Ukraine’s 3rd ? largest city). When we stepped off the bus we thought we had mistakenly bought tickets to the North Pole. It was so freaking cold. The thermometers read -15 C (5 F). I suddenly remembered why I avoid traveling in the winter. It took all of our will power to leave the hostel and explore the city. I made by bag considerably lighter by wearing all the clothes I brought yet I still couldn’t stay warm. Every 10 minutes we would have to duck into a store or café to warm ourselves and fight against frost bite and hypothermia. But it was sunny out and the city was beautiful. But we couldn’t take the cold and were ready to move on to Poland after a day and a half. So after a day and a half we caught a mini-bus on the second day to the border. We were told it was quicker to walk across the border than it was to take transport (Jason’s friend took a bus across and waited at the border for 10 hours). And luckily it was really easy to get transport to the border and beyond. And we were even luckier to meet a Canadian guy from Poland, studying in Ukraine. He spoke perfect English and Polish and showed us the quick way through the border- all in all it took 30 minutes. We posed as students. If we would have waited in the line at the border I am sure that today I would no longer be Jennifer the daughter, the sister, the friend, etc but instead Jennifer the popsicle. So we flashed our American passports (it is really an advantage sometimes having one) and walked right through. But we did have a bit of a problem with the border guard not believing that Jason was really Jason. His passport picture doesn’t look too much like him anymore, especially with his beard. It was pretty funny. I think it took 10 minutes to convince the guard that it was him but then he proceeded to say Jason’s name around 10 times in disbelief. But we made it through and the Polish let us in much easier. Our new Canadian-Polish friend was on a break to visit his parents in Poland. And did we luck out. His dad was picking him up at the border and offered to give us a ride to the nearby town where we could catch a train to Krakow. During the 15 minute ride to the train station we got to escape Eastern Europe as we rode in his brand new Chevy truck that was shipped over from North America speaking in English and reminiscing about America and Canada. But then we were thrown back into the cold and Eastern Europe. (half-hearted and sarcastic) hurray.

Our firs step was to get our train tickets. Bummer, we just missed a train and have a 2 hour wait. Not too bad though because it was around 8 and we needed food anyways. So we wandered around for oh 5 minutes before the cold wrestled us into the first cozy looking bar we came across. What better way to warm up than with beer. While sitting there contemplating if a dinner of beer was good enough we looked up at the clock and to our surprise was an hour behind our watches. Crap, Poland was an hour behind Ukraine and Moldova and therefore we had a three hour wait, ugh. So we made the best of it by drinking beer, eating French fries, and experimenting with all the options available on my camera.

Around 10 pm we forced ourselves out of the bar into the cold. We realized we still hadn’t eaten any dinner and were still hungry. The only place we could find open only had snickers, chips, and more beer to offer us. We got 2 of each. So we boarded the train and headed to Krakow. Around 2 am we arrived in my new favorite city. We woke ourselves and went on search of a internet café to see if we had a response and an address from the guy we were to be staying with. It took a while to find but we eventually made it to his place and fell into bed around 3:30am. The next few days were full of adventure. We walked everywhere and had tons of fun.

On our last day we visited Auschwitz, 2 hours outside of Krakow.

My vacation then came to a close and I had to travel back to Lvov to catch my bus back to Moldova. This was a long ordeal that began at 3am and didn’t end ‘til 6am the next day and involved very little sleeping. I had to take many different buses and wait a few hours between each one just to get back to Moldova. But I was greeted by tons of snow!

The Holidays

2008-01-24T14:43:00.000+02:00

I survived the holidays! Christmas was spent with a few close friends and New Years I stayed at home with my host family. Both included tons of food and lots of fun. I am happy to report that I got to play lots of games (Scrabble, Taboo, Cribbage, Rummy, etc).

Turkey Feast!! Complete with red and green mashed potatoes!

The stockings I made for everyone. They fit our feet!

A Real Winter

2008-01-24T14:40:00.000+02:00

For the past many years, living in Washington, I have never had a real winter. Yeah, maybe when I was a kid we had huge snowfalls but due to global warming, or whatever your personal theory is, it has been a very long time since I have gotten to play in the snow. Let me clarify this. I of course have gone to the mountains every winter of my life (last year being the exception, if only Moldova had mountains… if only). But this is not the same as having multiple days in a row where you step out of your house into your normal everyday world that has been transformed into a white paradise. I think everyone can agree that even the ugliest place on earth instantly becomes beautiful after a heavy snowfall. So, because last year was a crazy warm year I didn’t get to experience the real winters that Moldova has. But finally my wait has paid off, 15 months after my arrival, I get a real winter. The snow started falling in late November, but only flurries. But as soon as December hit BAM we got snow. And since then we have had three big snowfalls. The trend so far is one to two days of snow followed by really cold, SUNNY days. I have never loved Moldova more (except maybe over the summer passing through the sunflower fields.) The thing about the sunny days is that it causes the snow to melt a bit. This of course makes me sad but then night hits and causes it all to freeze up. Some how this process makes the snow last pretty long, HURRAY! But it also makes it very slick outside. (knock on wood but I have yet to fall). Thankfully Peace Corps provides all the volunteers with bright neon green Yak Traks. So not only do we stay upright but we attract everyone’s attention while doing it. Neon green doesn’t exactly blend well with black shoes. But hey, they glow in the dark!!!!

(A side note. Winter left us for a little while last week and the temperatures were quite nice. This however caused all the snow to melt and create a very sloppy, mucky, muddy mess. And I of course continued my morning runs coming home completely covered in mud, something that is very looked down upon in Moldova. It amazes me how Moldovans can stay so clean in such a muddy place. I can’t even walk 100 yards to the bus stop on my tip toes with out covering my shoes with mud and spraying it halfway up the back of pants. But then again, Moldovans are a little crazy when it comes to keeping their shoes clean. I watch many on a regular basis stop at each puddle on their way to slip their hand into the dirty water to clean the mud of their shoes. That’s right, they don’t care about sticking their hand into a mud puddle and wiping the mud off their shoes with their BARE hands as long as their shoes are clean.)

And a funny story. Last Saturday night I had prepared a Mexican meal for my Moldovan friend Maria. Since I don’t like staying out very late and everyone else was drinking except for me I decided to take off around 10:30. Though I have lived in Balti for a year now I still am not quite sure of the bus schedules. There doesn’t exist schedules like in America that say when the bus starts, comes, or finishes its route. This only really poses a problem when I stay out late with friends. Taxis are available and ridiculously cheap for American standards, roughly $2 to go 4 miles, but I still prefer to pay 10 cents for the bus. So, after I left Maria’s I went to the bus stop to wait and see if possibly a bus or routiera (small mini-bus) would pass by. After ten minutes or so I decided I would just flag down a taxi. As I was standing on the edge of the sidewalk trying to get one to stop a car swerved in close to where I was standing and also where lay a huge mud puddle. I knew it was going to hit the puddle and acted accordingly, I took a few steps back. Usually that’s enough, but this time, no! I was completely splattered! And it was more mud than puddle. And to top it off I was wearing light colored khakis. They were covered from the foot to the thigh and my shoes no longer showed any black. This was something that you would see on TV. I wish I could have had some on there with me to appreciate the hilarity of it. And I wish I had taken a picture when I got home because you probably think I am exaggerating a bit but no.

Fitness Club “Jennifer”

2007-12-18T17:26:00.000+02:00

That’s right, you read correctly. We named our fitness club after yours truly. It wasn’t my choice and all my protests against went unheard. My counterpart and the girls I had worked with wanted a name to remember me by. What better name than my own. We wrote the project back in June and started our renovations in July. Finally, finally everything was finished two weeks ago and we had our official opening. We invited all the important people- the mayor, PC director, officials from the mayors office, the director from the health center, etc, etc. We cut the ribbon, talked a bit, then had a big masa. I provided chocolate chips cookies and apple cinnamon placinta. My treats got eaten the fastest and everyone loved them best. Of course. The really cool thing about it though is that the village now has a place to work out for cheap without having to travel into the city.

The center was created in a section of the building that our NGO is in. We have one room for aerobics/yoga/etc. and one room with weights, a bicycle, and an elliptical machine. We have about 8 big balls for exercises and two discs full of different aerobics, yoga, pilates, ball work outs, jump rope work outs, etc. So far it has all been very successful and we have had lots of people pay to use it. I use it everyday after work for 1-2 hours. I am hoping to keep my winter weight in check. Especially with all the holiday masas coming up. But we have a group of girls who have volunteered to run the center and in exchange they can use the center for free. I am still so surprised by how successful it has been. I am glad to say that I have contributed something really big to this village and have something tangible to show for my time here.

Vacation (part 1)

2007-12-18T17:14:00.000+02:00

I know I went on vacation over a month ago but I have been busy. It takes up a lot of my time to play in the snow, read, knit, work out, etc. So this part is about the first part of my vacation, before I ran the marathon. It all started way back in October, the 29th to be exact….

Our vacation started at 7:00 in the morning on October the 29th. We awoke early to jump on board the 7am bus to Iaşi, Romania. It took us less than 2 hours to reach the border and say goodbye to Moldova for 10 whole days. We would have arrived in Iasi within 3 hours but of course boarder crossing can never be a quick and easy process. Instead you have to disembark on the Moldova side and show the officials that you are only smuggling smîntină (sour cream), cabbage, milk, and brînza (special yummy Moldovan cheese) instead of drugs. I kid you not, that is what people’s luggage was full of. Why pack clothes when you can pack fresh milk from the cow to bring to your relatives in Romania, because Romania obviously doesn’t have milk or cabbage. So anyways, we have to get off the bus again on the Romania side of the border and present our documents and bags again, maybe they don’t trust the Moldovans did a good enough job. We finally arrived in Iasi. Finally. We were on vacation and out of Moldova. Hurray! We celebrated by seeing a movie, in English. I repeat, in English. And t wasn’t some bad Steven Segal movie that they play on the TV here but an actual new, good movie- The Reckoning. Anyone see it? It was good, I recommend it. We also splurged and ate at a Chinese restaurant. Though we regretted it as soon as we bit into our food because of the huge chunk of glass I found in my rice after Jeff had chomped through (and swallowed) something very hard and crunchy. You’d think that would have been the end of our meal. But no. We picked the glass out an continued eating. We are still alive aren’t we. We ended our night early with a 9pm bedtime because we had to be at the bus station by 6am the next morning for our bus to Braşov. We were going to see Dracula!!!

Waking up wasn't such a hassle and making the 6am bus wasn’t so bad either. But the 8 hour ride through the mountains without heat was a killer. We froze!!! The woman in front of us kept yelling at the driver that we were all going to die and muttered to herself almost the entire trip. We made our bags lighter though by putting on all the clothes we brought along, which wasn’t much. In the early afternoon we finally pulled into a dingy bus station and we announced that it was Braşov. I was ready to go home. I had pictured a town like Whistler, Canada. Jeff and Sharon drug me away from the ticket window and we rode into the center of town hoping for something better. It was amazing. Braşov is beautiful!!!! There are tons of old buildings and huge hills around with mountains in the distance.The Brasov sign in the background.

We came to Braşov with the sole purpose of spending Halloween in Dracula land. And of course we made Dracula costumes especially for the occasion. The 30h, or what was left of the day, was spent walking around the town. Annie and Anastasia met up with us and the 31st was spent having fun. First we hiked up the mountain to the big Braşov sign (just like Hollywood).

We could see all of Braşov and beyond up there. Not to mention a bear. I swear to god! And it was less than 50 yards in front of us. It was sleeping though and wouldn’t wake up, no matter how much we yelled at it. We even tried to call it in Romanian, hey, a bear in Romania probably doesn’t speak English. But we could only get it to move a little bit. Just enough to prove it wasn’t dead.

The brown spot in the middle is the bear!!!

So we posed up there with our Dracula capes on then headed down the mountain. Our next stop would be Bran castle, the fake home of Dracula. Some how word got out long ago that the Bran castle is where the Dracula story was born. So tourists flock there instead of the real castle that is 3 hours away. We didn’t have the time to go to the real castle and we heard that the Bran castle might have a Halloween party. But by the time we figured out what bus to take and got there the castle had closed. But we saved ourselves a bunch of money by not going into the castle that I heard wasn’t worth it anyways. SO we headed back to town, put our costumes on and headed out to find a party. We succeeded in finding a couple smoky bars where half of the customers dressed up. All in all it was a fun night!!! Plus, we did eat tons of candy corn! Thanks Mom!

The next day I had to head to Buchareşti to so I could catch my early flight the next morning to Athens for the marathon.

Fun in Delphi

2007-11-07T12:57:00.001+02:00

4:54:29

2007-11-07T12:08:00.000+02:00

That my friend is my marathon time!!! That's right, I went to Athens, ran the original marathon, and finished! Can you believe it? 26.2 miles! I think it may have been one of the hardest things I have ever accomplished in my life. My friend Michelle and I had been training for the past 4 months for this one day.

It all took place this past Sunday, Nov. 6th. Me and Michelle and our 3 cheerleaders (Steven, Mike, and Chris) met up in Athens last Friday for fun, food, sightseeing, and running. We spent the first day getting our race numbers and all the free goodies (t-shirts, towels, key chains, granola bars, bag, etc.). Then we took it easy and ate some delicious food. Saturday we took a two hour trip out of Athens to go see Poseidon's Temple along the coast. Since we were all on tight budgets we didn't pay the 6 Euro to get in to see some old rocks and instead hiked around and went for a swim in the sea. We didn't do much afterwards because Michelle and I had to rest our feet in preparation for the next day. We weren't supposed to be on our feet, much less running, but as we were wondering around Athens Michelle all of a sudden screamed and took off in a dead sprint as soon as spotted Starbucks 3 miles. I think she has a honing device that lets her know when one is in a 10 mile radius. So we all satisfied our Starbucks/coffee cravings that we have had for the past year. After Michelle had her hit of coffee we left the boys on their own so we could go rest our legs and get a good nights sleep.
The amazing thing about being in Greece is that it is the WEST. Everything exists here that exists in America and not in Moldova. And what really makes this true is the food selection. We had read in the Lonely Planet Athens book that there existed a noodle bar somewhere in the city that did take out. We were on a mission. And what happy girls we were as we were sitting in our hotel room watching a movie in English and eating Thai food out of a take out carton with chopsticks. I think this was one of the highlights of my trip...well, along with eating at Subway, drinking Starbucks, having a slice of cheesecake, and eating a huge juicy cheeseburger with fries. So Sunday morning came quickly. We set the alarm for 5:30 so we could make it to the finish line by 6:30 to take buses to the start line to begin the race at 9am. The marathon started in the town of Marathon and we ran all the way into the stadium in Athens. I was a little disappointed because the route wasn't that great. I was expecting amazing scenery but got strip malls and gas stations instead. But hey, I can say I ran the Original marathon. The route was tough. It as pretty flat with some "nice" hills in the middle and the last 12KM was all down hill. I had a good pace the first half of the marathon until I really started to feel my foot injury that I got about a month ago. It is tough running on pavement for 26.2 miles. But I finished and ran across the finish line! Mike, Steven, and Chris were near the end of the route cheering for us and taking pictures of us. It was an amazing feeling to run across that finish line. I was laughing, and I was crying. They gave us all medals and a huge bag of bottled drinks to rehydrate. I had a huge high and couldn't stop smiling the rest of the day, especially since I knew we could eat whatever we wanted for the rest of the day and the next couple days.

PS....for more photos go to www.marathon-photos.com, click on the link to photos, and type my bib number in: 8189

Somre more pictures

2007-10-03T13:28:00.000+03:00

My host brother learning to eat cereal. He tries to scoop it with the spoon but ends up tipping the spoon before he even gets it 6 inches out of the bowl and ends up using his hand to eat it. He has been eating on his own now and every meal is so fun and funny.

Me! I don't know if you can tell but I got another haircut. My hair had finally grown out enough to fix the disaster that had happen back in March. I had my friend Amy chop it all so that every side would be even. When we were brushing it out before cutting it the back was about 3 inches longer than the left side which was about 2 inches longer than the right side. It was ridiculous! It is now relatively short and I just wear it in a kind of curly, wavy mess. It's cute! And I love it because it is so easy to prepare- just scrunch it and let it do what it wants.

A cool building. (If you email me, I will tell you where it is. Along with some of these other pictures.)

My host brother helping me with my homework. Usually when I sit at my desk to study or do my Romanian/Russian homework he likes to crawl up into my lap and scribble in my dictionary and on my homework.

So cute!

Jason and Annie in front of Ştefan Cel Mare.

A cool church.

Me and Annie!

Ţipova

2007-10-03T13:21:00.000+03:00

SO, I was downloading pictures from my camera to my flashdrive today and found a bunch of cool pictures from our trip to Ţipova this summer. We went on an all day hike and saw some monastery caves and cool waterfalls.

Funeral (part 2)

2007-09-19T18:23:00.000+03:00

After experiencing the big long process of the funeral here on Monday I was told the next day, Tuesday, that there would be another big meal that evening. The meals that celebrate the dead are called praznik (not sure about spelling). My host dad told me that they have these on the third day after the death (which was yesterday), the ninth day, the 40th day, at half a year, and then at a year. After that they can do it has often as they want. I think they all do it after 10 years. So after work I headed over to my old host family's house where the super long picknick table was still set up and we ate all the left over food from the previous day. My host dad's drunken dad cornered me at one point and talked my ear off about who knows what. There is a dialect of Romanian that we call Moldovan that is really hard to understand, especially from old village folk. It sounds like they are speaking an entire different language. But he made me promise that I would come for a masa at his house when my parents came to visit- so beware mom, dad, and Jenni. I met some other old, old woman who was very surprised I was American. She told me I had eyes like hers, a nose, and cheeks. She was baffled how similar I looked to a Moldovan. I guess her idea of an American is how we think aliens must look. It was amusing and I made a joke out of it telling her I had legs and arms like they did also. We had a good laugh together. So the next praznik will be Saturday. Another huge masa where I will probably stuff myself full of delicious food. It is funny that I am running 35 miles a week yet not losing any of my "Moldovan burta" (gut). The food here is just too good to eat a normal size portion. Plus I always have people telling me "eat, eat" so thats what I do. No complaints here though!

The tradition I was hoping to never have to experience in Moldova...

2007-09-18T15:19:00.000+03:00

Yesterday I went to a funeral. Before you freak out, don't worry, I barely knew her. I am in no way upset. On Friday my host dad's sister died. She had been sick for a long time so it was no big surprise. I had only met her twice and they were very brief meetings. I didn't find out that she died until Saturday night when I got home from a few days in Chisinau. My family was in the village arranging the funeral and i happened to lose my keys and was locked out (thank goodness there are three other volunteers nearby I can rely on). So it wasn't until Sunday that I saw my host brother who brought me a key. My host mom said I could come to the funeral if I wanted. I had no idea what to say or do. What do they say to each other? Should I go to the funeral? What would I do there? I was to scared to ask and decided at the last minute, 10 minutes before they were walking out the door, to go. I figured I could lend support to my family and my counterpart (it was her sister-in-law). I have really only been to one funeral that I really remember and that is what my caparison is based on. We showed up to my old family's house (it was her sister) around 10am. There was a viewing of the body there until around 12. Then they did a ceremony thing with the priest and gave out gifts to people who had come, they gave bowls, towels, scarves, teapots, and colac (a type of ceremonial bread). That lasted about an hour. Then they formed a parade(for lack of a better word) line to walk the body to the church and then to the cemetery. In front of the line was the kids carrying the flower arrangements that people had brought, followed by the religious flag/banner carriers, then the priest, the body with the family, and then the rest of the mourners. We would walk about 50 yards and then stop to pray and sing for a couple a minutes, and we did this all the way to the church. The 15 minute walk took us about an hour. Then at the church they took the body inside for about a half an hour and prayed- I am not really sure because I didn't go in. I didn't want to impose being the outsider and all and because I am not religious at all. They then brought the body back outside and marched to the cemetery. There they laid the coffin next to the grave and gave the family members a chance to say their final goodbyes before they placed the lid on. I would have to say that this was the hardest part of the entire process. The family members were just wailing. A couple of the sister passed out. This all lead to all of us crying of course. I was sad because I saw how upset her sons were, who are my age, and how they had to bury their mother, who was only 43. This made me think of my parents and made me very homesick to be with them. It wasn't until the cemetery that I actually got a good look at her because I didn't view the body at the house or the church and the rest of times it was completely surrounded by people. And not wanting to impose and step on any toes I stood back. But finally seeing the body was really weird because they don't preserve the bodies here like we do. Her skin was very waxy and yellow. And I have heard from other volunteers who go to funerals of car crash victims who look exactly the same way they did when they were pulled from the wreckage. Not only do they not preserve the bodies but they don't put any type of make up on them either for the viewing. It is very strange to see. SO once the body was placed in the ground we went back to the house for a huge masa. There had to be at least 80 people sitting at the extra long table that was overflowing with food. It was weird to sit there eating the food and discussing with the women around me about myself- where I am from, what I am doing here, etc, etc- when we were supposed to be mourning this woman. I still don't know what to say to my host dad. I have just been really quiet around him and have just been staying in my room. I don't know how he is taking it and I am scared to ask. I don't even know the proper way to ask or give condolences. It is all very weird and i really hope to not have to go through it again.

Update

2007-09-18T15:14:00.000+03:00

I know I didn’t post all summer but it was because I was out having fun. I spent every weekend traveling around Moldova seeing different cool places. Jason was here with me June and July and he really got to experience Moldova. It took us two months but we finally found a place to swim in a small town about an hour north of Balti. It was an actual outdoor swimming pool!!! And it wasn’t too dirty, we could smell some chlorine! It was so awesome. We also went on different hikes around Moldova, most not being real hiking places but us just walking beside a river for 10 miles, the best we could do. I worked some. Most of the kids were on vacation so my English classes were small and I didn’t have much to do. Most of you received the email about my awesome birthday meal and trip, those who didn’t- just email me and I will forward it to you. The weather finally mellowed down near the end of August. We have gotten a lot of rain, though a bit too late. Most of Moldova’s crops did not grow and they are now having to rely on donations from Ukraine and some world food organization. It is interesting that this was the hottest and driest summer in a 100 years and the winter two years was the coldest in 100 years. The group that came the year before us got to experience both of these, bummer. Now we are having really cool mornings and warm afternoons. It is nice to be wearing jeans again but still able to wear sandals. I have only worn tennis shoes once since the beginning of May (except of course when I run). Life is good though. I am currently trying to find some work to do. Now that we have hit the one year mark I am beginning to reflect on the past year and decide what I want to do this next year and how I want to leave my mark here in Moldova. A few of us have begun discussing an anti-littering campaign. That could be a huge project that would be really hard to catch on considering Moldovans freely throw trash everywhere, even on the ground right next to garbage cans. I just recently wrote a grant to do a village clean up and install a few benches and garbage cans and to do some anti littering seminars at the school along with a brochure to pass out throughout the village. I am still waiting the results. Today was my first morning teaching English at a kindergarten in Balti. I will be doing that two mornings a week. I have three groups of young children 3-5 years old. Each group only lasts at most 30 minutes because that’s all their attention span will allow. It was really funny today teaching the youngest group, we did it outside, and they way they would get distracted by an airplane overhead or saying bye-bye to a passing truck. We are also in the process of finishing up the renovations on our fitness center and have started buying the equipment. I hope it will be open in less than a month. Everyone wants to name the center “Jennifer”! I tried to say no but they won’t listen, they want to always remember me. Cute. Now that fall had hit me and my close friends have begun planning our Christmas festivities. We gotta have something to look forward to, right? It’s not that weird is it? (I am sure my mom has already started her shopping.) We picked secret snowflakes (we changed from secret Santa because we have a Jewish friend involved). So if anyone is thinking of sending a package and want to include a can of pumpkin, brown sugar, or some marshmallows- that would be sweet! And maybe some candy canes or other Christmas type candy, like reces (sp) cups! I miss you all a lot! Honestly.

The Current

2007-09-18T15:12:00.000+03:00

I wrote a previous, very short, post about the weather being 95 degrees. Most of our summer here in Moldova was 95 degrees, at least. We had one week where the only time it dropped below 100 was at night, and even then I think it only got down to 95. One day was almost 50 degrees Celsius- what is that in Fahrenheit? Hmmm, maybe 115. Not sure, you can do the calculation yourself. So during the 3 months where days averaged 95 degrees (I think we had 3 days of rain) it was kind of miserable. Going to work became a punishment because with all the computers on and the 20 bodies crammed in increased the temperature by at least 10-15 degrees. And the place was full of flies! Seriously. There would be 50 flies flying into my face and landing on my forehead and hands while I was typing. I am not sure if I hate mosquitoes buzzing in my ear at night or flies landing all over me more.

So anyways, during this crazy heat wave draught that Moldova went through I had to use public transportation numerous times. I had to use to and from work, around the city, to go to Chisinau, and for different excursions I went on throughout Moldova. This might not seem like a big problem, except that no one would open any windows out of fear of the Current. I do not refer to a current of electricity but instead to the breeze or wind. Moldovans are terrified (!) of a breeze. They would have rather died of heat stroke in the overcrowded, stifling buses than to open the windows. It was something we actually had to argue and fight over to try to keep the top hatches of the buses open (though we usually lost to some old baba). Many trips we would disembark completely soaked as if we had just jumped in a swimming pool.

The thing about the Current is that it makes you sick. This simple breeze is what causes the illnesses here in Moldova. My host dad would often close all the doors in the house to stop the cross breeze cooling down the house in fear that we would all get sick. WHAT?! And this isn’t just some superstition like breaking a mirror and having “bad luck” for 7 years, or whatever. Everyone believes in it, seriously believe in it. Even the doctors will blame ailments on the Current. It is especially bad for young children. They wrap babies up here in as much clothing as they can without suffocating them to protect them from the current. This summer, when it was 110 degrees, a woman could tell everyone to shut the windows on the bus because her baby would get sick from the Current and not one single person would argue but instead rush to close up the bus. The only thing that is going to make that kid sick is heat stroke!!! But they don’t listen. We try to explain what really causes illnesses and that the Current doesn’t exist but they won’t listen, at all. It is crazy and frustrating.

Summer in Moldova

2007-07-09T11:48:00.000+03:00

Jason wrestling with my host brother and old host brother. They love that he is here because now they have an "older brother".
A fun sequence of Jason jumping of a wall at Orheiul Vech.

Maybe you are curious what I have been up to lately. And maybe not. But I am going to tell you. So for starters, the weather has been 80-90 degrees and sunny everyday since May. Therefore I have been outside doing something every chance I get. I have been spending almost every weekend travelling around Moldova visiting other volunteers and seeing the sights. Moldova is so beautiful right now!!!! The fields are full of wheat, sunflowers, and corn. Though we have all been loving the sun and heat the main topic of conversation is the horrible drought we are having. The Moldovans are not happy that their fields aren't growing and the strawberry season came and went in a week providing only small green things. The price of peppers has skyrocketed to an all time high of 100 lei ($8) a kilo. All of the produce available has been going up in price every week. We have been getting thundershowers on a somewhat regular basis but it only rains for 20 minutes or so before the sun comes back out to dry it all up.

The Sunflowers!!!! Me, Jason, and Annie

Me, Annie, and Jeff at Orehiul Vech
Me, Jason, and Jeff

Jason, Annie, and Jeff at Orheiul Vech

Well, on a positive note, my organization just won a big grant to build a fitness center! We are all very excited and it should keep me very busy keeping an eye on the renovations and money spending. Other than this life has just been normal here. I have been teaching English 3 days a week and I have art and knitting class.

The 4th of July was a blast, the 3 different times I celebrated it. On June 30th the American Chamber of Commerce organized a big party for all the Americans in the country. We got together in Chisinau and hung outside all day. The food selection kind of sucked, I got one bite of pork chop and then only got veggies. But there was plenty of beer and wine! They ran out of water half way through the 8 hour party in the hot sun. Then on the real 4th I had a BBQ at my house. My host family was out of town and I invited all the volunteers who live around me over to grill and have fun. Then on the 5th I was invited to the Ambasador's house for a party there. Only 8 of us volunteers were invited to go eat wonderful food ans shmooze with the embassy staff and big wig Moldovans. It was a bit intimidating I have to admit.

Cappadoccia

2007-07-06T09:00:00.000+03:00

This was my ultimate favorite place!!!!! I am tired with writting this blog and will finish explaining later, maybe.

Kas

2007-07-06T08:32:00.000+03:00

After our relaxing time in Selemiye we bused it to the amazing town of Kaş. We are finally on the Medetrannien (spelling is wrong, I know, but the version of Blogger I am using is Romanian and it won't spell check in english) coast. We spent three days and three nights here. One day we explored surrounding towns, one day we sat in the suna nd swam all day, and i don't really remember what else we did. Probably a lot more relaxing and exploring.

There were tons of sail boats in the harbour from all over the world.

Our hotel is on the left side of the picture. It is yellowwitha turquoise stripe. Our room was the upper right hand corner. We had an awesome view from our balcony. In kas there were no sandy beaches, just rock. So they built these platform things that you see in front with latters coming out of the water. It was fun jumping of the rocks but the water was a little cold.

On our day that we went exploring we randomly found old ruins on the side of the rode. They were just there. Nobody protecting them or anything. Turkey is so cool!!!

An old sarcophagus in someone's backyard. I mean honestly. That's cool, right? This stuff was just everywhere. I wonder if the people living here appreciate the history that is arround them.

Selemiye

2007-07-06T08:01:00.001+03:00

Our trip to Selemiye was a lot more pleasant tha our previous bus ride. It was about four hours in the middle of the day. We stayed here for two and a half days and two nights. We did absolutely nothing. We swam, relaxed, and ate.

Oh and we hiked. We saw a huge hill nearby and just scrambled up it. There was no trail. But there was the bigest spider alive that made me want to jump off the hill.

The beautiful blue water.

Jason fishing right outside our hotel. We were the only people who stayed there and the water was ten steps from our door.

Selcuk

2007-07-05T16:54:00.000+03:00

SO after a long 10 hour bus ride over night we arrived in the small town of Selcuk (the "c" is supposed to have a tail thing on it to make a "ch" sound, but I don't know how to do it). He of course where immediatley approached by pushy hotel and pension owners tryign to get us to stay at their place. It is really annoying and overwhelming when this happens but at the same time can be nice when you have no idea where you were going to stay. So we picked the cheapest there and were on our way.

After checking into our small quaint and especially quiet pension we got ourselves a nice Turkish breakfast. Everywhere we stayed on our trip we got free breakfast included and it was always a Turkish breakfast. What is a Turkish breakfast you ask. Well, it consists of 4-5 salty, salty olives, 4-5 slices of cuccumber, 4-5 slices of tomato, an amazing salty, crumbly cheese, a hard boiled egg, bread, jam, honey, and butter. I think that is it. Every once in a while we got a slice of orange or watermelon. And of course there was tea and coffee, neither of which I drink. The Turks didn't know what to do with me when I told them this. At first the wold assume that I didn't drink certain types of tea but where completely astounded when I said I didn't like tea at all. I think this brought down my credibility in their eyes a couple notches.

So anyways. That first day we were EXHAUSTED from our wonderfully confomfortable 10 hour bus ride that got us exactly zero hours of sleep. But because I am me and was already awake I was ready to hit the beach. But of course Jason likes his sleep a little more than I do. So we layed down for an hour or so before I got too restless and made him get up. Why sleep in a hotel room when you can sleep on the beach????

Big mistake! We slept on the beach alright. But do you know what happens in the begining of summer in the hot Adriatic sun to people who's skin had been hiding under winter clothes for the past 8 months? It burns. We used the sunscreen! I swear! But since I can be a restless person when it comes to inactivity I kept turning over and read most of the time. Jason however, laid down on his back with his fingers laced together resting on his stomach. And you know what? Even now you can see every finger perfectly suntanned onto his stomach. Amazing!!! I have never seen a better tan. At the time he didn't think it was too funny and it was pretty painful for him for almost a whole week. I have an amazing picture of it but he has refused to let me post it, sorry folks. After our first day of playing on the beach and swimming in the Adriatic Sea we decided to keep ourselves covered and just do some sightseeing. Above is Jason at the infamous Ephesus. A large area of ruins. If you can look closely he has a scared look on his face because of the approaching Japanese tourists.

I found the bathroom. But din't worry I am only posing for the camera, if you couldn't tell by pants still up around my waist. There were about 15 or so of these holes made out of a nice marble or something for using the bathroom (Moldovans should learn from the Greeks on how to do an outhouse right).

So this is an amazing looking building with a lot of annoying tourists ruining the picture. This was probably the only shady spot in the entire area to escape the blazing 90 degree sun. There were so many tourists though. It was crazy. I couldn't believe how many of them were on packaged tour things either. HMM, not my ideal way to travel.

The huge theater. It was big.

This is now at St. John's Basilica. More ruins.

Same place

Me and Jason one night climbed up the side of St. John's Basilica to watch the sunset and eat our dessert (though at the time we had no idea what we were climbing up the side of). We got into a bad habbit of eating lots of dessert. One night we went out for icecream and ended up with a fourteen scoop bowl with chocolate, coconut, and nuts on top. And yeah, we ate it all. Or we would go get a pastry and end up ordering almost one of everything (remember Delhi Clayton?).

This is the ould aquaduct that ran through the city. At the top of the pillars there were huge stork nests.

We stayed in Selcuk for 2 days before moving on down the coast to Selemiye.

ISTANBUL

2007-07-05T16:11:00.000+03:00

Ok, so I know I have been back from vacation for almost a month now and am just finally posting about it. I have been busy. Really. Ok, well kind of. The real story is that the internet connection is really slow at work and I hate uploading pictures there and haven't either had the time while in Chisinau to do it or I forget my camera at home. So finally here you go.

So our trip started May 27th in Instanbul, Turkey. I met the wonderful Jason there around 9pm. I thought it would be weird to see him after 9 months but no. It was awesome! No weird akwardness. Hurray! We ended up spending two very full days in Istanbul trying to get as much in as possible before heading down the coast to smaller towns. Here is a corn cart where I got at least one corn a day. The food was amazing. I am sure you have heard of the famous doner kabobs. One meal a day we would go to the kebab stand where they had chicken packed onto a skewer roasting and waiting for customers. When you ordered your kabob they would thinly slice the meat off and put it into a flatbread/tortilla shell with veggies, chilli powder, ketchup, etc. We wold get one of those and a cob of corn and devoure them in the park or down nex to the water.

I love markets!!!! Istanbul has the huge Grand Baazar and the Spice Market. The Grand Baazar is HUGE! We wandered around it for a couple hours lost unsure if each place we passed we had been to before. Every vendor wanted to sell us something whether it was a rug, a leather jacket, a diamond ring, or a cermaic bowl. I can't believe how many people wanted to sell us rugs. What would I do with a rug? Honestly.

This is just a cool picture with the Turkey flag and the Blue Mosque in the background. Istanbul was such a cool place to walk around. There were mosques everywhere. And 5 times a day there was the call to prayers that each mosque projected very loudly across the city, which started at 5 am. The architecture in Instanbul was very interesting. Walking down the street you would see a very new modern building right next to a very old stone building or wall. And the people were all so different. You would see modern day teenagers dressed in their punk clothes walkign next to a woman totally covered in black with only her eyes showing. And then there was a mixture of the two with young teenage girls in long skirts and head scarfs but with rock t-shirts over them.

This is inside the Aya Sofia. It is a huge old mosque that has been turned into a museum. It began as a christian church and then was later changed to Islamic. Now when walking around you can see the plaster crumbling away to reveal the mosaics of the christian style church that the islamics covered up. Very cool.

Hanging out with Jason. It was HOT in Istanbul and we were able to find some shade and grass that we ould actually sit on the have a mid-day nap.

The Blue Mosque from far away.

Inside the Blue Mosque.

The Aya Sofia on the outside.

After our two days of sightseeing and craziness in Istanbul we hopped in a ten hour bus ride down the coast to Selcuk, the home of Ephesus.

It is 95 degrees!

2007-05-27T13:31:00.000+03:00

Period.

Random pictures

2007-05-27T13:23:00.001+03:00

My bathroom (these pictures of my awesome apartment)

My entry way

My room

My living room

My kitchen

Me and Sharon

My host brother

The slippers I crochet.

Soroca

2007-05-27T13:06:00.001+03:00

Last weekend my friend Sharon and I took a small day trip to the town of Soroca. This is where lives a big population of gypsies, who own huge, beautiful houses.

The castle!!

This sign is funny because the middle sign is outlawing the eating of sunflower seeds in the castle. If I haven't mentioned, Moldovans love sunflower seeds and eat them all the time. I have also jumped on that boat and always have a pocket full.

Me and Sharon.

An orthodox church in the background.

The castle.

The border crossing. I tried to talk Sharon into taking a quick trip over into Ukraine but she said no. And it makes sense since we had no passports and Peace Corps would get mad.

Graffiti.

Sharon.

Moldova is on the left and Ukraine is on the right seperated by the Nistru river.

Nunta!!!

2007-05-27T12:43:00.000+03:00

A couple weeks ago I went to my first Moldovan wedding(nunta) ever. It was so amazing. Moldovans are known for their extravagant weddings (well to those who know where Moldova is). There are many traditions that Moldovans uphold at their weddings causing many weddings to last late into the evening or early morning. This particular one that I went to started at 6pm, though Moldovans love to be fashionably late. My family and I showed up around 7:30 but we were "early" because most of the other guests didn't show up until 8:30. Moldovans do weddings differently than we do. Of course they go to the church first and do the religious bit but only close family is invited to this part. It is at the reception afterwards that everyone comes to. So after everyone showed up and greeted the new couple with warm wishes and flowers we moved into the dinner room to watch the signing of the marriage certificate, the dance and exchange of the colac(traditional bread), the "buying" of the bride, and the breaking of the bread over the married couples head. We didn't actually sit down to eat until 10:30(P.M.!!!). So we sat around eating late into the night. Dishes kept coming out until 2:00am!!!! Oh my goodness. Since no one can actually eat for four hours straight there was dancing in between dishes. So we danced, ate, and drank all night long. Around 2am is when they began collecting the money. The wedding party goes around to every single table with a microphone and allows everyone to wish the new couple well and to say how much money they are giving the new couple (a little tacky, I know). This lasted forever. It takes a long time to have a hundred people each wish the couple warm wishes. Luckily, I didn't have to talk or give money. But the crazy thing is is how much money these people give. Most of the people were giving $100/100 EURO. That is A LOT of money for Moldovans!!! That is a lot of money for me. I think the couple made at least $6000 that night. And what is funny is that they actually gave dollars or euros, not Moldovan lei. Definitely a show of status and "wealth". So by the time this ended we were beyond tired and left around 3am. At this point they still had not yet "undressed" the bride which involves the passing of the veil from her to someone else. I found out the next day that the wedding ended around 6am(what!?). As I have said many times before, Moldovans love to celebrate and party!

The bride and groom tied together to dance.

The bride and groom walking under the flowers to their table.

The signing of the certificate.

The bride and groom greeting their nanaşi (like a maid of honor and best man).

Me!

What's beautiful and green all over?

2007-04-30T08:23:00.000+03:00

Moldova!!!!

The day of the dead

2007-04-30T08:09:00.000+03:00

In Moldova, and Moldova alone, there is a special holiday a week after Easter where everyone goes to the cemetery and has a picknick. It is done either Sunday or Monday, depending on where you live. Sunday I got to experience the holiday in Bălţi with another volunteer. We just walked around watching everyone else have their picknicks next to their dead relatives. Monday I went to the village with my host family to experience the picknick. It was all very strange. We had a huge meal and drank lots of wine and vodka. Then I ran around the cemetery playing with the kids (honestly, who runs around and plays in a cemetery?). This is what the cemeteries look like. They don't get rid of the extra dirt when they burry a person. So all over the place you have mounds where the dead lay. Kind of creepy.

Some of the girls I was playing with. The middle girl is my coutnerpart's daughter.

My host dad, host brother, me (with my new haircut that I don't like-It was a semi mullet at first but I cut it off and I pin the bangs back and it all looks better now. I made the mistake of telling the hairdresser to do what she wanted. But hair grows so it isn't too bad.), my counterpart's husband and my counterpart.

People having their masa (picknick).

A picture from the cemetery in Bălţi. The graves in the city cemetery were all surrounded by gates and fences. In the city and village most of the gaves have permanant tables next to them just for this holiday.

A grave with a fence and table.

Paşte

2007-04-11T16:26:00.001+03:00

Or Easter, in English. The holiday has always just been a day about chocolate, Easter bunnies, egg hunts, and brunch with family, oh, and we can’t forget spring break. In Moldova things are very similar yet different at the same time. The kids here are also on school break for the week, we have chocolate Easter eggs, and died hard boiled eggs. However, in the States, I never once experienced starting Easter morning with mandatory shots of vodka and wine. Let me start from the beginning…

Saturday my host family and I got up early to catch a bus to bunica’s (grandma’s) house in a small village up north. The ride there was comfortable, mainly because I had a seat (the ride back was a whole different story). We arrived and had to have someone meet us at the entrance to the village because there was no public transport to take us the 4-5km to bunica’s. When we arrived we immediately ate. And from that point on we ate every 0-2 hours…don’t worry mom, you don’t have to worry about me ever going hungry in this country with they way the constantly are throwing food in front of you and shouting at you to eat. Saturday we ate no meat because of the fast. So we just relaxed and ate all day. Around 10 or so we were all pretty exhausted from getting up early and the travel that we decided it was bedtime, especially since me and host mom would be getting up at 4 am to take the meat, eggs, and bread to the church to get blessed. In the villages in Moldova a lot of people have a small house and a big house. In the winters they usually live in the small house so they don’t have to heat as much with the soba (fireplace like thing). Since it is still cold and we still need heat we were all housed together in the casa mica (small house). This particular one didn’t have separate rooms and all the beds were together. This wasn’t a problem for me at all until my host dad fell asleep before me. I have never, ever, ever in my life heard anyone snore like he does. It is like he has a beast trapped inside of him. Seriously, that is the only way to describe it. You would think he was joking snoring but you realize it is real when it goes on for the entire night! I slept 0 hours! When host mom came to wake me at 3:30 she had no problem. We hurried in the cold and dark to the church with our basket of bread, meat, and eggs. We met the rest of the village there with their baskets of meat, bread, and eggs. The baskets were lined up outside and we stood behind them with candles. About an hour into being there I began to get really nauseous and was worried I was going to throw up over everyone’s baskets. But then I started to get dizzy and things went quiet as my sight dimmed. I realized in time that I was going to pass out because I had me knees locked and immediately ran over to where all the really old people sat to rest myself. My host mom of course freaked out and came running over. I had to somehow explain the situation without knowing he words for “pass out”. It ended up being pretty funny and once I rested we returned to our basket. At 6am the priest came out and threw holy water on the baskets and us, which wasn’t very pleasant because we were already cold and a drizzle had just begun. But at the same time it meant we could return home to our warm beds.

After returning home and sleeping peacefully for three hours I was awoken by the baby, who has just learned he has a wonderful set of pipes for screaming really loud. So we all got up for breakfast which consisted of chicken, meat patties, and chicken jello. While eating we passed one glass around which we all took shots of wine and vodka from, Moldovans for some reason have one glass that they pass around for everyone to drink out of. For the rest of the day we just rested and ate. In the evening we went to a couple other masas and ate way too much. After returning home Monday I didn’t want to see any meat for a week, and still don’t. The ride home consisted of me standing the whole way packed between people. It wouldn’t have been so bad except this one woman kept shoving me in the back trying to make more room for her fat ass. I kept trying to push her back but I was no match for her, nor for any Moldovan woman. The women here are very strong no matter what their body stature. But I made it home in one piece and did enjoy the experience.

What have I been up to?

2007-03-29T15:58:00.000+03:00

Hmmm, what have I been up to? Not a whole lot! I have complained to a few about my lack of activities and my work as a secretary but lately that has begn to change. Maybe because my program manager came to talk with me and my counterpart and we sat down and actually defined my role. And for some reason it didn't include typing and making xerox copies. Hmm...so since Tuesday, when she came, I have done....um...not much. Yesterday we went to another village to conduct trainings for girls there about human trafficking. It was interesting, I guess. And then today I tried to start my art class but only three kids showed up and two of them had to leave after 15 minutes. Not off to a good start. Buy hey, I still have 19 and a half months, right?

But on a really good note I did eat a little piece of heaven last night. My wonderful and loving boyfriend sent me a bottle of syrup (it doesn't exist here). Last night my host mom made pancakes, a weekly dinner for us, and instead of eating them with the usual jam or jam with peanut butter, I ate them with PB and syrup. Oh my goodness!!!! It was amazing! My host mom tried some on a pancake, without PB, and loved it also. But she can't figure out how we can have syrup that isn't from fruit. I tried to explain about trees and sap but she didn't understand. It was even harder to explain when I read the ingredients and trying to explain corn syrup, you know I like the fake syrup better then the real stuff. But I do have a favor to ask, more like a plea. I am down to my last half a jar of peanut butter and need reinforcements. If anyone is even thinking about sending a package, please, please, please include a jar of peanut butter (and maybe a couple frisbees if possible). You are wonderful!

Other than trying to start some type of work, I have just been enjoying our wonderful weather! We have had sun every day his month except for three days when it stormed here. It has been so great to be able to run outside in the sun, especially now that it is light later (we just had our daylight savings this past weekend). I really love it here in Moldova!

Annie's Birthday

2007-03-12T12:03:00.000+02:00

I love, love, love getting together with other PCVs and making dinner. Last night was annie's birthday and 5 of us rented an apartment for the night and attempted to make phad thai. The attempt was a success! Our meal was amazing and followed by real brownies!

2007-03-12T11:45:00.000+02:00

My old host brother and new host brother been silly

Michelle, Annie, and me back during PST.

The "beautiful" silver gate

I picture I think is really cool!

Joe, Ben, Walt, me, and Angela being silly

Snow in a graveyard

My little host brother who I am in love with!

My counterpart' son. I was playing with my camera and colors.

Her son and daughter.

Me and my host brother

Son random kids in Chişinău

8 Martie

2007-03-12T10:16:00.000+02:00

As I have said many times, Moldovans love to celebrate. The 8th of March was yet another holiday for us where we had big masas and did no work. Many of you probably don't know this but the 8th of March was International Women's Day. Moldova takes this holiday very seriously. The whole week the kids have vacation, there are concerts in the villages, and on the 8th we have a masa and give gifts to women. I think it is awesome that Moldovans celebrate women in this way yet it is a very condratictory holiday because the women work very hard all day preparing the masa and clean the table and dishes afterwards. But it is a start.

So the 8th of March is preceeded by another holiday, Marţişor. It is a holiday on the 1st of March celebrating spring. Nothing too exiting happens on this day except that people give eachother marţişoare. These are little red and white things you where on your shirt, like a pin. I ended the day with five pinned to me from some of the kids in my village. The kids like this day because it is the start of what we call spring break. The funny thing about March 1st this year is that as soon as it hit the sun came out and melted all the snow in one day and we have had beautiful weather ever since, spring is here!!!!!

March 1st our village had an "awesome" concert. And in awesome I mean the same "wonderfulness" that is at every other concert. If you have seen one concert you never need to go to another one because it is the exact same. My counterpart's daughter sings the same song (which I absolutley hate!), her son does the saem dance, and there are about 3 adults who sing about 10 Moldovan popular songs i.e. hora music. This type of music involves pipes, accordians, and what not that are played at amazing speed, or as my friend Amy as explained "frantic, spastic music that sounds like Moldovans were just given a bunch of instruments and told to just play them as fast as they can." When I I first got to Moldova I really liked the music, but now I can't say the same thing. When I hear it now for more than 2 minutes I want to gouge my eyes out. And for some reason at the concerts they play the music as loud as possible and some of the songs still have the original lyrics in them and you can't hear the person on stage at all, which sometimes is a good thing. So not only do I have to bear the same thing all the time but then I have to sit for two hours ina freezing cold autitorium. I think one of the criteria for a casa de cultura is that it can have no heat what so ever, that you have to wobble out of there with frozen toes.

I am usually pretty lucky that these concerts don't happen too often or that I happen to be in Chisinau for Peace Corps related activities. However, for the month of May, I have been to two already and it isn't even the middle of the month already. Our village held a second concert on the 7th to celebrate women. My counterpart of course guilted me into coming, she is very good at that. She told me it would start around 7pm. I of course showed up to the casa de cultura around 6:30, because that it was you do right? You show up early to get a seat. Well I know I should have learned by now that nothing in Moldova starts on time. But I figured there should be at least some type of preparations going on there. Boy was I wrong. There wasn't a single person there. Curious I walked to my counterparts hosue to find out what was going on. She informed me the concert wasn't goign to start until 8 or so. Umm, ok, only an hour late. So I hung out at her house until 8:30 or so before she woke her kids from their nap to get them ready for the concert. In short, the cocnert didn't start until 9:30, way after my last bus, which meant that I would be staying the night at my counterpart's house. The concert ended up lasting until 11:30pm! I wasn't too bummed about this becuase the concert ended up being very different than normal. It was like a talent show almost, though it could have been shorter and there was still lots of bad music being sung.

A couple of the boys dressed up as girls!

Crocheting

2007-02-28T13:17:00.000+02:00

Amazon.com amazes me. It literally sends stuff everywhere, even Moldova, a country that nobody knew about until I came here. Back in January I received a package from them with some origami books and a book on how to crochet (it only took 3 weeks to get here!). Since receiving the package I have set my knitting aside and have starting crocheting. I have only done two projects so far but have plans already for others.

My swimming pool adventures in Moldova

2007-02-28T13:16:00.001+02:00

Not exercising for a week makes me very stir crazy and kind of depresses me a bit. With all this snow lately I haven’t wanted to run because it is way to cold and I don’t feel like running in my Yak Tracks. So I have decided to go to the public pool in Bălţi more often than the one time a weeks I was going before. I am curious what you think of when I say a public pool in Moldova. Do you worry about my health and picture skin infections galore? Well amazingly the pool is very clean, very chlorinated. And the process of getting into the pool is an interesting one.

First of all, living in Bălţi can be difficult at times because it is a mostly Russian speaking city and many times I run into people who don’t know a lick of Romanian. This happens at the pool. Luckily my tutor had told me ahead of time what to do and bring. First you have to go into the nurse and show her your stomach and palms. Why? Who knows. You also have to show you’re your soap and, what I didn’t know, was a sponge. Unfortunately I forgot the sponge but didn’t know it because I had no idea what in the world she was saying. And of course when someone doesn’t understand what you are saying you speak louder because of course by the time you get to yelling volume they will finally understand. Why is this? Why do we all do it? Again, who knows. So after the woman yelled at me someone came to my rescue and explained to me in Romanian. Once you are cleared by the nurse she and she has decided your stomach looks ok she hands you a piece of paper to take to the ticket window. You hand the woman there 12 lei (about $1) and the piece of paper. She then hands you a different piece of paper so you can check your coat, bags, and shoes. You are not allowed to wear your street shoes into the locker room and must bring a pair of indoor shoes to wear around the locker room and pool. It is quite a complicated process that involves a lot of Moldovans pushing and shoving.

SO once you finally get into the pool area you are lucky if you can find a lane that doesn’t have people just hanging out in the middle. Many times I can’t swim laps in straight lines because I am constantly dodging people. Sometimes the swim coaches are good about telling people to move out of the way but sometimes I do run into people while do the backstroke. What is funny though and amuses me every time is the way people react to my tattoos. It is not normal for people to have tattoos in Moldova, especially females with big stars on the back of their leg. All the girls that notice my tattoos open stare and point, it is hilarious how obvious they are about it. I can’t wait until summer when I wear tank tops and skirts everyday that show them off to everyone, I wonder what the reaction will be then.

Mexican Night!

2007-02-28T12:40:00.000+02:00

Oh man! Things don’t get too much better than stuffing yourself with two huge burritos. Saturday night 4 of us volunteers got together to feast. We all met up in Bălţi to get the necessary ingredients before heading to Jeff’s house in a nearby village to begin the preparations. Of course Moldova isn’t really stocked with the key ingredients for Mexican cooking so we had to improvise. Since tortillas don’t exist we had to buy lavash bread which is fairly similar, and then since tortilla chips are very expensive we had to make our own by cutting the lavash bread into triangles and frying it. The salsa of course had to be made from scratch and the refried beans were just mashed up white beans reheated. It all turned out excellent though thanks to my mom sending me two packets of taco seasoning (way to go mom!). Jeff had invited two of his Moldovan friends to the feast also and they got their first taste of Mexican mancare (food).
We of course all ate too much but decided to work it off with some sledding. Oh my gosh, I love to sled! We had a tiny one person sled that we kept forcing two people onto. It made it way more fun trying to keep two people on it while trying to stay out of the ditch. We have been so lucky with snow lately. The snow we got Thursday has stuck around and we got a bunch more last night. Though unfortunately it is getting warmer outside and I am afraid by next week it will all be gone L. But I have had my wish of lots of snow and am now ready for warm weather, fresh fruits and veggies, and fields full of sunflowers!

The Simple Things in Life

2007-02-23T14:36:00.000+02:00

It is amazing the way little, unimportant things can have the biggest impact. I have been in the worst mood all week and have actually considered coming home. It is funny because I had the best day ever since being in Moldova this past Monday. I started the day with passing out questionnaires to the kids at school so I could find out what type of activities to start, then I taught a group of kids to fold origami after school, and then I was invited to play volleyball with the girls at school the following day. I went home Monday with this amazing high knowing that I would finally start doing real things in my community. The high didn’t last long though. My counterpart smashed it Tuesday when I talked to her about starting clubs and that we needed someone else to work here all the time instead of me (I didn’t come here to make copies, type documents for teachers, and take money from kids all day, I am NOT a secretary!). She proceeded to tell me that there is no one else to do the job and that in more or less words this is what I will be doing for the next two years. If this turns out to be true, I am on the first plane home. So since finding out that I can’t do anything here that I want to do I have been in the worst mood. And it wasn’t until last night that my mood lifted.

There is something about snow that seems to make everything all better. I left work yesterday night in the foulest mood after the guy that was supposed to take over came an hour late, so I didn’t leave until 7pm. But as I walked outside I saw that the ground was blanketed in white and that the snow was still coming down strong I immediately became giddy. I love the snow so much! And guess what?! It was still snowing when I woke up this morning! But that is not the end of the story. After I got home and we ate dinner (which was a yummy Italian pasta dish) our power went out. This was a problem for my host mom who had just made a bunch of dough to bake bread in the electric oven. I was a bit sad there would be no fresh baked bread but felt a hundred times better when she started making placienta on the gas stove.(If you don’t remember placienta is a pastry type thing that I am totally in love with and it can either be baked or fried). Oh I was in heaven! Snow and Placienta all in the same night!

My mood has dipped a bit today after coming to work again to just sit and stare at a computer all day but I just make myself look outside at the snow, and now sun, and I immediately feel better. And I keep thinking of the Mexican masa me and some other volunteers are planning to prepare tomorrow night. Food always makes me feel better!

Origami = Instant Friends

2007-02-22T18:36:00.000+02:00

Do you remember back in elementry school and middle school when you used to make those paper fortune tellers? The one with the colors on the outside and numbers on the inside. Well for some reason I thought about them last week and decided to make one. As I began to fold the paper that would be my future fortune teller the group of kids huddled around me grew. They were all wondering what the crazy American was up to now. When I finished folding they all were amazed by the way and it moved. They were confused when I started writting colors, numbers and fortunes on the thing. They thought I was defacing the beuaty of the paper sculpture. But it was when I showed them how to use that I went down in history, well theirs anyways. I will forever be remembered as the Amercian that folded paper. Ever since showing a couple kids how to make and use them last week I have had the most friends ever! (Granted they are all around 10 y.o., it still counts as friends). I have new kids coming up to me every day asking how to make them. It is awesome!

Bălţi Crazy Creative Soldiers

2007-02-16T13:52:00.000+02:00

I mentioned about 2 months back that I was coaching an Odyssey of the Mind team yet I don’t think I ever really explained anything about it. OM is an international program designed to let youth think outside of the box and be creative. It is all in English and an excellent opportunity for children and teens that live in countries that don’t promote and offer creative outlets for them. In countries such as Moldova students in schools, from what I have noticed, aren’t encouraged to be creative like we are in the States. They aren’t given the opportunities such as drama classes and don’t do interesting class projects like we are used to. When I first started meeting with my team it always took the first half hour of our sessions to coax them out of their shells. You could tell they weren’t used to just letting go and being goofy and creative. Of course now they are all totally crazy and it is hard to get them to be serious, but hat is the way it should be at this age in their lives.
So, OM is a competition for youth from about age 6 to about age 21 or so. Kids and teens form teams of 5-7 in their age group. Every winter, around November, they are presented with 5 long term problems that change every year. They have to choose one problem that they would like to solve over the next three months to present at the national competition in February. This year one problem consisted of building a machine that would transport an object from one place to another, another was making a pop up book. Our team chose the problem “Around the World in 8 Minutes.” For their problem they had to have a traveler which visited 3 locations. One of the locations had to be either the North or South Pole, the second location had to be a known place on Earth, and the third location an unknown location that only the people living there would know it existed. The traveler has to have a reason for visiting each location and the skit can only be 8 minutes. The hard part for us as coaches is that we cannot give any ideas. We can only encourage them to be creative and ask questions.
My group came up with the story that there was a creature whose planet blew up and he was the only survivor. He “led a nomadic lifestyle traveling around the galaxy in search of a creature like himself.” He spotted the South Pole and went there hoping to find someone. He came across some scientists who told him to go to Morocco, our second location. When he got to Morocco he met with the head of a community and in exchange for a totem he wore around his neck the head of the community gave him a map to Hawaii where there was a volcano. The creature had to enter the volcano which contained the gates of Hell. In hell, our third unknown location, he had to make a deal with the devil to get his girlfriend back. The devil, who was a girl, was fat and wanted to be thin again so the creature had to help the devil workout and become thin before his girlfriend was freed. After the girlfriend was freed the devil begged them to stay in hell with her and they agreed because they had no planet to go back to. The end.
Their story was really funny the way they acted it out and hopefully, if I can, I will post the video of it here. The competition was last Saturday in Chisinau. The problem that our team chose was very popular and we had to compete against 16 teams in our age category. We scored really well on our problem but only came in 8th place because along with the long term problem there is also a spontaneous problem portion of the competition. For the spontaneous problem the team goes into a room of judges and has to solve a problem on the spot. The problem presented this year was really hard and dumb and our team scored really low on it affecting our overall score and placing us 8th. The kids had fun though and really enjoyed the experience. The bummer part about not winning is that we cannot go to Germany for the international competition. Oh well, there is always next year!
P.S. Our team name was the Bălţi Crazy Creative Soldiers

So...

2007-01-29T16:45:00.000+02:00

I am still alive. I know I haven't posted in a while, but nothing too interesting has happened lately. I had a week of training in Chisinau and otherwise have just been working. Chisinau was a good time though tiring. We stayed up too late every night hanging out and had full days of language and technical classes everyday. I have changed host families because things didn't work out with the family I was living with. I am now living in the nearby city Balti. I am living with who was my host aunt but I guess now she is my host mom. I commute to the village to work, though it is only a 15 min bus ride. I am now living in a very nice apartment, not necessarily what you would imagine Peace Corps to be. As I have mentioned she has a 7 month old who is the most adorable thing ever(except for little James, Erica). I get to play with him everyday and it is so fun to watch him grow and learn new things, like how to bang the spoon on the table, he is laughing a real laugh now, and he is starting to crawl all over the place.
To take up some of my idle time I watched the second season of Lost. Amazing! This show is like a drug. I burned it onto disk from a friends computer and brought it to work with me and all I did for three days at work was watch Lost. I NEED to watch season 3 now. Next I plan on watching season five of 24, another show that will paralyze me from doing anything for a few days.
My Odyssey of the Mind group is getting ready for the competition on the 11th. They are currently making the sets and costumes now. At our next meeting we will start working trying to get the skit into an 8 minute time frame. I really want to win, I really want to go to the competition in Germany this spring. A little selfish, I know, but it would be super cool.
So, yeah, other than that nothing super cool going on right now. I have really gotten into the groove of Moldova now and am feeling quite content here. I haven't thought about quitting and coming home in at least two weeks, I think that is a good sign. I have made some good friends now which helps fight loneliness and homesickness. I have been running alot. I have decided I am going to run a marathon with my friend Michelle next November in Athens. So if anyone feels like travelling to that area around that time, I would love to have some cheerleaders.
Hope all is well with everyone. Hopefully my next post will be more interesting and action packed. Though, for anyone who likes to read, I just finished reading Eragon. It was an awesome book that I recommend to everyone! I also just watched Beerfest which was a really funny movie if you like stupid comedies. La revedere.

Knitting Acomplishments

2007-01-18T18:04:00.000+02:00

The Glod!

2007-01-11T12:38:00.001+02:00

The Romanian word “glod” which means “mud” is quite fitting and here can’t be called mud because it is very different. Moldovan glod is unlike any other, like most things here. I first discovered the glod my second or third week in Ialoveni after it rained. On my way to language class I liked to cut through the orchard because it was prettier, quieter, and quicker than walking the main road. The day after it rained I thought I would walk through as any normal day, the only difference would be a slightly muddy road. I was so wrong!!! About 100 yards down the “dirt” road I had about 2 inches of glod packed to the bottom of my tennis shoes. I thought it was strange for mud to that so I stopped walking, picked up a stick and scraped the mud off. But another 100 yards and I was walking two inches taller again. Well, the short cut ended up being the long way because I kept stopping to scrape the mud off my shoes. I thought then that maybe the orchard just had weird dirt that was a little sticky. Wrong again! When I reached the road our school was on I was met again with sticky mud. And from that point on the sticky, wet, slimy brown stuff would be known as glod and only glod. I don’t know what maybe the glod here so special, maybe it is the mixture of dirt, animal poop, and whatever else ends up on the roads. Or maybe it is the specialty of Moldovan dirt, the fact that it is so fertile it is said you could plant a shoe and grow a shoe tree, that accounts for its amazing stickiness. Whatever it is, I hate it. We had been luckyup until a few days ago with very little rain and not too much glod. But lately we’ve been getting just enough rain to keep it glod-y enough to make my jeans splattered with glod and my newly washed tennis shoes filthy again. And today we really got rain. The roads are horrible!!! Luckily, thanks to Colleen, I am sporting a hot pair of pink paisley rubber boots that have protected my feet from mud and water, though my jeans still got some splatter. This really makes me appreciate living back in the states with paved roads.

Christmas #2

2007-01-11T12:36:00.000+02:00

As I said before, Moldovans celebrate many holidays. Last Sunday was the Orthodox Christmas. Not being Orthodox I wasn’t sure what was going to take place. Would I have to go to church? Is there presents? Well, for most of the day nothing exciting happened. I sat around, in my pajama pants (when your are at home here you don’t wear “outside” clothes, you where pajamas, sweats, etc. and if you don’t leave the house at all that day you never have to change out of your pj’s) and read all day, taking breaks to play with my host brother and cousin. For Christmas #2 the kids do all their caroling. They walk around in groups from house to house with bags for candy, cookies, and money and sing carols…kind of like our Halloween but without costumes and it is in the middle of the day. Around 4pm we all got bundled up and went to my counterpart’s house for a big masa. There were other family members there and we all ate a ton and of course drank wine, champagne, and vodka (which luckily I didn’t have to drink). My host family left before me because my counterpart’s daughter wanted me to stay and play with her. So I left when another family left so I didn’t have to walk home alone. But we didn’t go straight home. We made as top at the disco bar, very random. And the even weirder thing of randomly stopping at the disco bar with a random couple was that their year and a half old son was with us (whom drank some wine at dinner also, just a bit but it was funny to watch him cheers and clank glasses with everyone). So anyways, we were just hanging out at the disco bar drinking a beer. Then they left and some girl I don’t know too well convinced me to stay there with her. So we danced a bit and drank sodas. Around 11 I decided I should go home because my host family had no idea I was there and I had left my counterpart’s 3 hours ago. The girls made me promise though that we could go out again to the disco another time. Weird. And another random thing was that two nights I was walking home with the mayor and a teacher and the teacher randomly invited me in to dinner. It was fun and she said she would teach me how to crochet. I love it here!

I want to clarify...

2007-01-03T15:10:00.000+02:00

Ok, so I don't normally laugh at dead animals but let me set the scene for why our dead, frozen dog was funny. Pets here in Moldova are very different from pets in the US. Most dogs and cats don't get to come indoors and aren't really petted or played with. I made the mistake early on in my stay here of petting a couple "cute" looking dogs to find out how dirty they are (no matter how cute or clean looking the dog is, it is filthy), and you can see the fleas crawling around in their fur. The two dogs we had at our language school in Ialoveni got used to being pet by the bottom of our feet. They got so used to it one would try to nuzzle under our feet while we were sitting at our tea and cookie breaks. If the dogs here aren't running around in packs looking for tasty people to eat, especially us runners, they are kept behind a fence (everyone here has a fence/gate around their house) on a very short leash, very short. Alot of the dogs have dogs house where they can get shelter from the elements but they more or less have to bear the cold, cold winters here outside. The dogs here are either very, very timid and scared (from being kicked and what not too often) or vicious as hell. I only come across the loose vicious ones every once in a while when I run and the "rock trick" always works. Because so many dogs are used to having rocks thrown at them if they attack all you have to do is bend down and pretend you are picking up a rock and the dog will take off like the Flash. I have gotten surprise attacks a couple times by dogs that run up silently behind me and bark just as they get to me which startles me to scream and jump and that in turn scares the hell out of them and they usually take off.
So anyways, about our dog. I think he was pretty old and may have been kind of sick (not a good combination with the coming winter). So New Years morning I was in the kitchen preparing my breakfast when Dumitru (host bro) went out side with hot water for the dog and pigs. He wasn't gone very long when he came back, looked at me, and said "Cîine a murit", the dog died. There was no sadness in his face, it was as if he just told me it was raining outside. I of course was like "Oh my gosh! What!?" Did I hear him correctly? Was he going to start crying, what do I do? Then Galea (aunt) came in heard what had happened, this time he added that the dog was frozen, and just laughed. This of course made me laugh because how many times does a dog freeze? (It is pretty common here actually). So we all pushed out the door and the dog was just lying outside of his doghouse stiff as a board. The four of us a laughed a bit more and then they said they would just go to the Piaţa and buy a new one. Oh Moldova!

Random Events

2007-01-01T15:24:00.000+02:00

After I returned from Christmas in Chisinau last week I was going to work around noon expecting to open the place. I had to run over to the kintergarden to get the key from my counterpart's son and ended up staying there until 4pm. There was a New Years concert going on with the little kids and they made me stay and watch. The concert then was followed by a big masa for the kids. The parents set up the table for all the little 6 year yolds with tons of food. After the kids ate us adults got to sit down and eat wha the kids didn't, and of course the bottle sof wine and vodka came out. Many of the parents drank quite a bit and I was also forced to try everyone's house wines that they brought and wasn't able to leave the kintergarden until I took a shot of vodka with everyone. It is kind of horrible because I hate vodka and want to puke even when I smell it but they didn't seem to care about this and made me drink anyways. I didn't puke but I did provide great entertainment for everyone with the faces I made. Because this was the middle of the day I sobered up before going to bed and had a nice headache visit me around dinner time. 22 and a half months left of this forced drinking, what am I to do?!

Moldovan New Years

2007-01-01T15:20:00.000+02:00

As I have mentioned before, New Years is a very unexciting holiday for me and usually prefer to stay home (though the last two years spent playing bunko at Bob and Robin’s was very fun!). Well last night I got to stay home and do absolutely nothing. I went into work for the afternoon so that the kids could play their computer games for hours on end and then returned home before it got too dark. On my way home I stopped to watch a group of boys play ice hockey, village style. The boys didn’t have any type of hockey equipment but made do with some sticks and a tuna fish type can. Clad in their tennis shoes they slipped and slid all over the frozen creek (it has been very cold here, everything is frozen, and we would have snow if it weren’t clear and sunny everyday).
When I got home I ate some food and relaxed with my knitting. As some of you know I am currently working on a sweater which I have now finished and will post some pictures later. It has turned out as good as a first sweater can. I wish I would have used a different yarn and color because with the texture the yarn created and the brown color, I look like I am wearing a fury/hairy sweater…not the most attractive, but oh well, at least it is warm. Relaxing at home I kept stealing glances at our Christmas tree, though I couldn’t really see any tree because of all the garland and tinsel. Moldovans think the tree is beautiful when I show them pictures but I have a different word, “tacky.” But really I wouldn’t change it, it makes Moldova what it is.
Around 9 pm we ate dinner and then watched New Years television, you know the kind…ice skating shows, comic shows, etc. with everyone dressed up and drinking champagne. We of course all fell asleep and host aunt woke us up at 10 til midnight so we could eat cake and drink champagne. While toasting there were awesome fireworks going off in the neighbors yard right behind us. Then around 12:30 we went back to sleep.
I woke early this morning to the boys watching TV and eating the chocolates I bought for them waiting for me to watch the DVDs I bought them (Superman and X-men 3). They bought me yummy dark chocolate and shared their chocolates with me. We pigged out all morning watching Superman. Then we had more cake for breakfast (I also had a banana, apple, and oatmeal) and the boys finished off the champagne. Yes, they are only 12 and 13 but here it is normal to drink at an early age. When my host brother went outside to feed the dog and pigs he found our poor little dog frozen. It is sad but we all had a good laugh that he was frozen. I find frozen dogs every once in a while walking around the village, survival of the fittest here. Now I am at work so the boys can play their games. Happy New Year!!!

A Moldovan Christmas, Unlike Any Other

2006-12-29T15:37:00.000+02:00

Starting mid-November our group has been on a 3 month “lock-down,” which means we are not allowed to leave the country or stay overnight out of our sites. This gives us a chance to really integrate into our communities. However, Peace Corps realizes we are without family for the holidays and gave us the allowance to stay out of our sites for one night, for Christmas or New Years. I of course chose Christmas because I don’t like New Years that much and because Moldovans don’t really celebrate Christmas on the 25th. So 6 of us met up in the capital to spend Christmas Eve and Day together.
We all met up Sunday morning to head over to Annie’s host mom’s apartment that she was letting us borrow for the night (she has a regular house in Ialoveni where she lives). After checking the log book at the Peace Corps office for packages, which only Michelle’s where here, we get to the apartment. We quickly dropped off our bags and headed to the near by supermarket to purchase the necessary ingredients for a Christmas feast. Our plan was to make lots of cookies and then a yummy lasagna for dinner with garlic bread. The supermarket by the apartment was amazing, just like a grocery store in America (there were actual spices, a whole aisle for pasta, a whole aisle for sauces, etc). Forty dollars later we had food, wine, and water.
As soon as we returned to the apartment, ate a snack, we set in on making lots of cookie dough. I made sugar cookie dough, Annie had a package of Toll House cookie mix from the states, and we concocted a dough from chunks of chocolate bar, walnuts, and oatmeal. The doughs were delicious. We turned on the oven and put the dough on cookie sheets and when we went to put the dough in the oven we found out the oven wouldn’t get hot. So we called Annie’s host mom (couldn’t understand a word she was saying), found a neighbor to come help us (though she couldn’t figure it out), then we brought up the doorman (who couldn’t work it either but wouldn’t leave and we literally had to push him out the door). We didn’t know what to do, we questioned frying the cookie dough. We also thought maybe we should just eat dough and forget the cookies, but what about the lasagna? Half way through one bowl of dough we came up with the idea to use the toaster oven, it had to be better than frying the dough. And we got lucky too, because the grocery store didn’t have big lasagna pans so we bought 5 mini ones that fit perfectly into the toaster oven. So we ended up making bar type cookies that turned out delicious, even though each batch took about an hour to bake in the tiny toaster oven. The lasagna turned out perfect too. By the end of the night we had eaten so much lasagna, garlic bread, and cookies we were ill. We watched the Polar Express before going to bed and fell asleep dreaming of the cinnamon rolls Annie would be preparing for us in the morning.
Christmas turned out as good as it could away from family, even though my packages never arrived in time and the oven did not work. I had leftovers of lasagna to bring home to my host family and cookies that they absolutely loved. I have taught my host aunt how to make chocolate chip cookies and now she has made them multiple times. I next want to teach her how to make cinnamon rolls, yum! I got calls from my family Christmas night which was nice, even at 1am when my dad thought it was a 12 hour difference between here and the west coast. Now we are preparing for New Years which is a big holiday here and can’t wait to tell you all about it once it takes place. Happy New Year!

The Joys of Public Transpotation

2006-12-22T13:12:00.000+02:00

Think really hard of the last time you rode public transportation that was crowded beyond your belief (ayone been on bus #44 at rush hour to ballard). Now times the amount of people by 20, and decrease the size of the bus by half and you will have Moldovan routieres and buses. Routieres are like giant vans with about 20 seats and standing room for about 10 (comfortably), though generally have at least 50 people standing (no joke). Routieres stop where ever you want them to while buses have specific stops and are cheaper. The worst transport I have been on is the bus/routiere to and from my village. It only runs every hour to and from our village to Balti. The bus/routiere is never empty. And about 3 weeks ago the big bus broke down and now we only have a regular size bus and a routiere. The routiere seems to be running most of the time which is a bummer with how many people are always riding it. Getting on in the center in Balti is always a hilarious scene for me. When the routiere pulls up everyone crowds around and pushes like first graders to get onto the routiere, before people even have a chance to get off. Once we all get in the driver has to come and force the door closed, because always the routiere is beyond packed(last Monday he slammed that thing 6 or 7 times to get it closed, I was glad I wasn't one of the people getting slammed). And when you think no one else will fit we make another stop and pick up 10 more people. (Whenever I do my shopping I try not to buy bananas when I know it will be crowded because they always get mashed). It gets so crowded that you don't even need to hold on to anything because nobody moves anywhere, you can't even raise your arm to itch your nose. Whoever comes to Moldova to visit I will make you experience the buses just because it is so insane.

I Finally Remember!!!!

2006-12-22T12:51:00.000+02:00

It only took a whole month of walking home in the dark before I finally remembered to bring my headlamp with me when I leave the house. Two nights ago was the first night and boy were my ankles and shoes glad. When I was walking home without a headlamp I usually couln't see a single thing, there are no street lights off the main road. I had to feel my way with my feet praying not to step in cow pies, old burn piles, or holes. Some people have porch lights but they don't help at all. Instead of lighting up the ground at all they seem to hit me directly in the eye so I can't make out a single thing except blinding light. Every once in while I would come upon a wandering dog that would startle me or a teen couple making out. But without street lights the stars are amazing. You can see them all and every once in a while I have a moon to help light the way. But I am happy to know now that we have just hit the winter solstice and days should be getting longer now. Let's just hope I keep remembering my headlamp until the days are actually longer.

My Crazy Week

2006-12-19T12:57:00.000+02:00

Last week was insane!!! It started with Monday. I went to work in the afternoon then to Balti to work with my Odyssey of the Mind group followed by dinner with another volunteer (we made chicken pasta in a peanut sauce, absolutely delicious). Then tuesday I went to work at the normal time and got stuck there alone working and running the place. I had kids yelling at me to put time on their computers so they could play their games, I had people wanting photocopies(and when the xerox went on the fritz I had to figure out how to fix it while it spouted error messages at me in Russian), and then I had old women wanting me to type stuff up for them(which would have been fine except they wanted fancy borders and stuff which I couldn't figure out how to do because the computer programs are in Russian). Then on Wednesday I had lunch with a couple volunteers then a tutoring session. Lunch was fun, tutoring was not. I was very frustrated and couldn't speak worth anything. Thursday I woke up early to go to Chisinau to take care of residency papers and such. Ran all around the city running errands. I got back to Balti aroun 5:30pm and missed the bus to my village. So I had to wait until 6:30 for the next bus. Somehow managed to miss that one too. Since the next one wasn't coming until 8:15 I took a cab home. It cost a lot but I was so tired and hungry it was worth it. Then on Friday I taught a computer class which was interesting because I don't know any computer terms in romanian and the computers are in russian. It went ok though. I taught the kids how to use Word, they wrote messages and changes the color, font, and size of their workds. Then Saturday I went to Balti early for Odyssey of the Mind, then worked the rest of the day. Then Sunday I worked all day. I had to open the center at 10am and was there until 5pm. For some reason none of the computers wanted to work correctly while I was there and had some arguments with some of the kids over them. I snuck out of there around 1:30 to go eat lunch and run, but returned to help out with a training my organization was putting on. And to top it all off our water pump broke Friday night. We are wihtout running water now. I am like other volunteers. I have to use the well and bucket bathe. It isn't too bad except that I am running out of clean clother and need to do some laundry. Host aunt says I can use her washing machine in balti but I haven't had time to go there and do laundry. Today I have oipened the center and have to go in an hour for my tutoring session in Balti. Maybe it might not seem crazy to those of you in the Western world who work 8 hours a day normaly, but it is a big change for me, I am used to barely working.

A few notes...

2006-12-19T12:29:00.000+02:00

First off, I got a cell phone. You can call me anytime on that now instead of on my house phone. I will place the number in the contact box to the left. Also you can send me free text messages from www.moldcell.md . There is a tab for english so that you can navigate the website.

Second, some people have been inquiring about packages and what I may need. The only thing I really need is Peanut Butter. They do sell it here in Chisinau but it has no flavor, added fat, and it is exspensive. I could also use Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Other than that, whatever you want to throw in. I love anything from Trader Joes, and have been dying for fruit leather. If you send something I really appreciate it, but just remember it is kind of exspenisve to mail stuff here so don't make the package too heavy.

Third, I miss you all very much. I really like the comments you all post and will try post more on a regular basis.

Pictures

2006-12-14T10:47:00.000+02:00

My coutnerpart, me, a bunch of boys, and her husband after we plannted shrubbery

Table tennis at my house cunstructed with the kitchen table

I cut my hair

Host cousin Mihai age 13, host cousin Nickolas age 6 months, and host brother Dumitru age 12

Me on my hike out past my village

Th cruţa I saw

An old oven

A cow skull, one of many that littered the hill I climed up

A flock of sheep I saw

My village in the distance

Just a view

Progress

2006-12-12T15:31:00.000+02:00

To work on my language I have started seeing a tutor twice a week which has added more to my schedule. It gives me a reason to leave the village and go into Balti twice a week for two hours. My language is doing ok, I feel like I have come to a standstill on speaking and vocabulary yet I can understand more and more what people are saying. Yesterday my counterpart and I discussed activities and programs to start in the spring after we remodel a room adjacent to ours, where our computer center is. We came up with activities and budgets to put into a project proposal she is currently writing. Also, yesterday I became a co-coach with another PC volunteer of an Odyssey of the Mind team with 7 teens in Balti, another reason to go into the city another 2 days a week. If you don’t know what Odyssey of the Mind is I will tell you more about it later, or you can look it up online. So things are going well, I am starting to make myself busy, not just going to work and then back home. I try to set little goals for myself all the time. Two of them right now are to run for 45 minutes and to go into Balti and get my jeans taken in. I have been meaning to get them taken in for a month and half now but am kind of scared to do it. I am scared I won’t understand the tailor and that they won’t understand me, that is why it is a big goal of mine. Hopefully I will do it tomorrow when I go into Balti for tutoring.

My Life

2006-12-12T15:26:00.000+02:00

I know I haven’t written in a while, you may think I have been really busy. But no. I just simply haven’t been using the internet much except to check email. I am doing awesome though. I love it here, my mood has been much better since Thanksgiving. I don’t think as much about coming home though I do have quite a few dreams of being home or having people here visiting me. So, you are probably all curious what I am doing over here. Well the short answer is nothing. I work about 2-3 hours in the afternoon and just chill the other 22 hours of the day. My average day, I wake up between 8 and 9am but don’t get out of bed until 9:30. Every other day I run for a half an hour and than stretch and work out for another 20 minutes. I eat breakfast around 10 or 11 then chill out until 2 or so when I go to work. I work until around 5 or so, not later because it gets dark and my counterpart doesn’t want me to walk alone in the dark, which is tough to do without street lights. When I get home I watch TV, read, knit, or all of the above. I eat dinner between 6 and 9, later on the weekends, and then keep busy until 11 when I go to bed. I have gone though a few books already and I am a little over a third of the way done with the sweater I am knitting. I won’t really start doing much until my language gets better. Right now I am just working on language and building relationships within the community, trying to get invited to a masa or two (a masa is a big meal). But I love living in the village. It is bigger than I originally thought, I went on a big hike around it this morning to explore. I was told there is a forest and lakes but I found neither. It is so fun walking around though, you say hi to everyone and all the dogs bark at you. I am becoming a normal face now and some people are stopping to actually talk with me. Geese, chickens, turkeys, dugs, and dogs run all over the place usually running from me, every once in a while a dog or a goose comes after me. Everyday is interesting and I love it here!!!

Ziua de Reconistinta

2006-12-01T15:49:00.000+02:00

In limba engleza, Thanksgiving. I haven't figured out how to do the special letters yet that only exist in Romanian. However, Thanksgiving was great, well except that I was on the verge of tears all day. It is tough being away from family and especially not being able to speak with them (I was in Chisinau with not phone to be contacted on). Luckily I volunteered to help cook all day Thursday, it kept my mind off of family. Cooking was a blast. I made biscuits from scratch with two other girls in my group. It was so fun, but a lot of work. I also carved a turkey for the first time. Well actually I carve four. We had fourteen all together. I know it seems like a lot but we were feeding 300 people(volunteers, PC staff and their families, and embassy staff and their families). It was a huge feast. I ate so much in the kitchen that when the feast came around I could only eat two pieces of pumpkin pie, I had planned on eating a half a pie. I love pumpkin pie. And yes, it was pumpkin from a can brought from the states. Our group was given a list of ingredients to bring over with us back in September. It was a great day, as long as i kept myself distracted. After the feast we had a talent show. There were many good acts that where very funny but there was one that brought the entire audience to tears. It was when a guy started singing "I'll be home for Christmas" that we lost it. The tears I had been holding back came flowing out. The guy sang it wonderfully but it was the wrong time to play it. We were a funny site to see, crying and laughing in our seats. I don't know if I mentioned the time in language class when we were learning about holidays. Well, Annie was describing how her parents weren't doing anything for Christmas this year because she was going to be gone and so was her siblings. During her story, in limba Romana, me and Michelle looked at each other and lost it. Our instructor, a man, was stunned. he had no idea what to do with us. So from that day on we banned talk of holidays in class. It is still tough to speak of the holidays without our families. Anyways, so Thanksgiving was great and we all stayed in Chisinau for two more days for conferences. I love you all and will be thinking of everyone for the next two months, in Moldova we have two months of holidays, a new and old Christmas and a new and old New Years. Moldovans love to celebrate!!

My first days, impressions, experiences

2006-11-18T15:42:00.000+02:00

I arrived here, to my new home, Thursday afternoon. It has been an exhausting first week. No more English, no more Americans. It is tiring speaking Romanian and listening to it all day everyday, but let me tell you, I have improved so much in a few days. It is almost unbelievable how much better I can hear Romanian now than I could four days ago. So when I arrived I expected to be met by my new host mom who I met on my site visit, nope! She just left to work in Italy for two months. So it is me, my host brother, and my host dad(who was working in Moscow when I first visited). I was a little hesitant at first but host dad has turned out to be an amazing language tutor. He works with me very hard to make sure I understand and am speaking correctly. However, I just found out that he is leaving Sunday for Moscow for two months. What!?! Who am I supposed to live with? I asked him if I could still live there and he said yes that host aunt is going to come by and cook for me and host brother. Um, alright. Luckily she is very nice. Site is great though. I go to work every afternoon for about two hours and then return home to relax. I have so much free time! It is ridiculous. Though I can't get off my training schedule and still wake up at 7am every morning. I have decided to start running everyday to take up time and to stay in shape. The village is fun though. I have been meeting lots of people. It is very small with 2700 people. It takes me about 15 minutes to walk to work on unpaved roads with tons of ducks, geese, and turkeys everywhere. I love all the animals running around. My house is very warm, almost too warm at night, which is not the case for many volunteers. I am a very spoiled Peace Corps volunteer. I have hot running water(in a shower form), an indoor toilet, heat, and I am 15 minutes outside a big city. It is very different from those volunteers located in bushwack Africa. I think I have lots of work ahead of me. The kindergarten, school, mayors office, and my NGO all has projects they want me to do. I will be keeping busy. The great thing about my village is the lack of light in the nights. I can see so many stars and it is nice and dark when I sleep. However, I have made the mistake three times now of leaving work a little too late and having to walk home in the dark. Once I get off the main road I have to slowly creep home praying not to step in mud, cowpies, or holes. It is kind of an adventure, though hopefully next time I will remember my headlamp-which many Moldovans find very funny. Host dad laughs at me when he sees me wearing it on my head. Stay turned for more on my activities...

Goodbyes, a Ceremony, and Welcomings

2006-11-18T15:23:00.000+02:00

I am now a volunteer!!!! I have been learning, teaching, struggling, succeeding, crying,and laughing the past two months for this moment. It was tough to say goodbye to my host family in Ialoveni. I left them on Wednesday morning to spend the day practising for our swearing-in ceremony on Thursday. It was sad, but luckily they only live two hours away and I can visit. Wednesday night we had a big dinner with all the trainees and quite a few current volunteers. We were warned not to show up to the ceremony hungover, if we were we would not be walking up on stage to swear-in. Luckily I was not tempted by the drink because I am trying to get over a cold that has just been wearing me out. Thursday we all woke early to dress in our best and head to the ceremony, we had to arrive at 9:30, the ceremony started at 11am. The ceremony was amazing. I wished my parents could be there to see me succeed in this and be proud, but my host mom was there so that helped. People from our group learned traditional dances and songs to perform on stage and four people gave speeches in Romanian and Russian. I didn't do any of these because the practices were after long Hubsite days and I always wanted to go home and hang out with my host family, especially towards the end of training when time was becoming precious. I instead took pictures of everyone performing. We were all called onto the stage though and swore-in in front of everybody, it was a bit emotional for me. I still can't believe I am doing this. After the ceremony we had a meal and then left for our sites. It was sad to leave everybody but it was nice to climb into a car, kick off my heels and rest for the hour and a half drive to Elizaveta, my home for the next two years. Besides, I will be back in Chisinau with everyone in less than a week for Thanksgiving.(I will post pictures later when I am in the city witha faster internet connection)

A Great Community Entry Activity

2006-11-18T15:05:00.000+02:00

As an assignment for the technical portion of our training we had to have a big dinner in our village with the 7 of us trainees, our professors, and host moms. We all gathered in Anastasia's kitchen and learned how to make Coltunas(ravioli/dumplings). We stuffed them with cheese, potato, and sour cherries. Very delicious. A couple of the girls made sangria that turned out to be a deep violet color, almost unnaturally violet, that's what happens when you use homemade wine. I got to carve a pumpkin and we roasted the seeds. It was a great time, I wish all homework assignments could be like that!!! Us Americans sang oldies songs and our moms sang Moldovan songs. (I will upload pictures later, the connection here is very slow)

Halloween

2006-11-03T13:50:00.000+02:00

I don't have much to say about this but I wanted to share some pictures. Americans love Halloween, for many of us it is our favorite holiday. Why? Because it is the one day we can dress up all crazy and be thought of as normal and we get to eat lots of sugar. Those of us here in Moldova didn't prepare for Halloween when we were packing our bags back in September, those extra sweaters and long johns beat out the costumes. It was a tough decision whether or not to bring the fish costume but in the end I would rather be warmer(I know, I know, I obviously don't have my priorities straight but oh well there is no going back in time). So in the end we all had to be very creative with what we had. I decided to just be a Greek goddess, it is very easy to just wrap a white sheet around you and put some leaves in your hair. Unfortunately, I hate to say this, but there were people much more creative than me. We had a walnut tree, a well, the current, the statue of liberty, Laura Bush, and much more. We made Halloween the best we could but it was tough without candy corn and "fun size" candy bars (who decided to name them fun size anyways? I don't think they are fun, it's more like a tease size).

Haram

2006-11-03T13:32:00.000+02:00

Haram is village day. Last Friday was Ialoveni day. Anybody who works or goes to school in Ialoveni had the day off, however we did not. We begged and pleaded with our teachers but they didn't seem to care we were the only ones who would be doing any work that day. Fortunately during the day not too much was going on but towards the evening is when all the festivities started. Haram is a day when people celebrate and eat lots and dance lots. On Thursday night I came home to our table covered in pig parts in preparation for the next night (I ended up having to eat my dinner at the kitchen counter next to plates of pig guts, very appetizing). So on Friday after class I went home and made chocolate chip cookies for my family. Considering I had no measuring devices and a small old, portable oven they turned out very tasty. Around 5ish is when we all met in the center to party down. When we first arrived there was wrestling going on which a a traditional thing to do at celebrations. It was fun to watch guys without their shorts on wrestle. The winner of the whole thing got a sheep (never thought that would be a prize did you?) As it got darker out the music started up and we all danced non-stop for hours (well I guess we stopped when we had to use the bathroom). Speaking of bathrooms, there were port-a-potties there. Though, there was only two and they filled up rather quickly, so it was best to go behind a building. We all had tons of fun dancing the Hora (the traditional circle dance here) with a bunch of local kids, some we knew from around Ialoveni. Around 9 there were awesome fireworks. It reminded me of last summer at the lake with all the mortar shells we had(oh, homesickness). I know that my new site will have celebrations like this but I am very sad I am leaving Ialoveni, I love it here and I love my family here.

Third Times a Charm, Right?

2006-11-03T13:20:00.000+02:00

Alright, so I tried to write this blog twice last Monday but twice the power went out, very frustrating. So I wanted to tell you all about our trip to the Milesti Mici wine cellar. We went a couple weeks ago. It was an interesting trip. We toured the largest wine cellar in the world, it holds a Guinness Book record for the most bottles in one cellar, about 2 million. Some of the wine dated back to the mid 80's and the bottles had the dust and cobwebs to prove how old they were. We got a short tour and two tiny tastes of wine (not worth the $12 I paid, which is a lot when we only get $2 a day). Thats all I have to sat about this, the pictures are cool though.

2006-10-21T13:29:00.000+03:00

Daniel(a friend), Daniel(my brother),

and Adrian(the neighbor)

My brother Vadim and sister Mariana

The scary yet cool old soviet Hospital by my house that was never completed

We took the stairs most of the way up....

...But then had to crawl through a hole in the ceiling to get on the roof

The five of us on the roof with Ialoveni behind us

An Orthodox church in Ialoveni

Elizaveta

2006-10-21T13:04:00.000+03:00

Well, I am now back in Ialoveni, have been since Wednesday night. My trip was ok. It would have been wonderful except it was sooooo cold. I arrived in Elizaveta Saturday late afternoon and visited with my counterpart and visited my organization. My organization "Contentus" is an internet center and does other stuff with kids, I am not quite sure what though. I do know my counterpart wants me to start an English club and we have a couple concerts for disabled children in the winter. So after visiting the NGO we went to see my first potential host family, I had two options. It was a nice house with a mother and her 10 year old son, the dad is working in Moscow and her 16 year daughter is studying in Romania. The house had an indoor toilet, a washing machine, two pigs (yumm, I do like pork), and chickens. We hung out there and had lunch/dinner and then my counterpart took off and I didn't see her until Tuesday afternoon. I had told her I wanted to meet the other family but she insisted this one was the best. So as I was hanging out with family number 1 and looking at their photo albums(I saw at least 10) I began to realize my counterpart was in a lot of the pictures. So I asked if she was a good friend, nope, she is the woman's sister in law. Great I will live with a family who is related to my counterpart, exactly what Peace Corps advised us not to do. It was fine though. The woman was amazing. So Sunday I went to the internet center with my new host brother and my counterpart's son. I sat around for 5 hours watching boys play counterstrike, sounds fun huh? They even tried to teach me but it was hard because the computers were in Russian, hmmm, too bad I don't speak Russian. So while sitting there doing absolutely nothing I began to question what I was doing there in the first place. And after some boys began making fun of me in Romanian (which I didn't understand) I was ready to board a plane home as soon as I returned to Chisinau Tuesday. It was everything I could do not to break down right there in front of everyone. But like all volunteers have told us, Peace Corps is an emotional roller coaster, one minute your up and the next your down only to return up again five minutes after. And this is what happened. As soon as I returned back to my future host family's house and was given a big bowl of popcorn and was offered to go visit the other potential host family I felt great again. I did visit the other family but it was already kind of decided I would live with family #1. What is funny though is on Monday the mother from family #2 came over and made placienta and bread all day with mom #1. It was so fun, except I couldn't stop shivering, even with all my clothes on that I brought and three pairs of socks. It was about 10 degrees C in the house. But I forgot all of that once the placienta was done cooking. Placienta is my favorite. It is a flaky pastry filled with potato, cheese, cabbage, or pumpkin. Delicious. All in All my time in Elizaveta was good, I am looking forward to returning there in November. I returned to Chisinau Tuesday and stayed there until Wed. afternoon for some conferences with the volunteers and their counterparts.

My Site...

2006-10-13T10:21:00.000+03:00

On Tuesday we learned where we will be living for the next two years. I will be up north in the raion of Baltsi(pronounced- belts) in the village of Elizaveta. It is a village of 3,700 and it is 15 minutes outside the city of Baltsi. I still am not quite sure what I will be doing though I know my organization works with kids. I don't know what their goals are but I do know that the village wants water, so hopefully I can be that awesome volunteer that brought them water, they currently have wells. The village has never had a volunteer before so I will be the interesting new person- "The American". Tomorrow we go visit our sites for 4 days all by ourselves. I have to get on the correct bus and get off in the correct village. Then I have to spend 4 days meeting my counterpart(the person I will be working with for the next two years) and potential host families. My counterpart has found three families for me and over the next four days I meet them and choose which one I want to live with for the next two years. This is really exciting!!! Luckily there are at least 5 volunteers who live in Baltsi or right around it who I can turn to in the next 4 four days if I need help or just a break from trying to speak Romanian.

The Wine Festival!!!

2006-10-13T09:59:00.000+03:00

Saturday and Sunday the 7th and 8th was Moldova's 5th(?) annual wine festival. They close off a section of the main Blvd. and set up tents and booths for wine makers. People go around to different tents and try different wines from 10 in the morning until 10 at night. Some tents give free tastings at others you just buy a bottle and sit and drink it in tent, in the street, or in the park(we did all of the above). Our groups went in around 11am on Sunday and didn't leave until about 8:30 pm...9 hours of solid drinking. Now, I am not one to normally drink as I hate being hungover and I only like beer, but this didn't stop me. By noon a few of us had already finished off 3 bottles and were going for more. You may think this was an expensive day, buying bottle after bottle, but no bottle was over $3, the really good stuff was maybe $5...I think I spent $1.75 the whole day for a lot of wine, my lunch was more expensive than what I drank, $2.25. At one tent we were at we got to try to the different stages of wine. We tried the Must(pronounced moost) which is the point where the grapes are starting to ferment and create wine, at this point it is very sweet, almost like juice, but if you drink more than one glass you will be in the veceu(outhouse). We also got to try it in the stage between must and between wine, also pretty sweet, but not as gassy as the must. At one point in the afternoon there was about 15 of us sitting around some tables and there was always at least 10 bottles on the table. When it started to get dark there was music in the streets and we began to dance. Some locals danced with us and tried to teach us the Hora (the national dance). All in all it was a great day!!!

Fish, Fish, and Guess What? More Fish!!!

2006-10-07T14:15:00.000+03:00

That's right, all I eat is fish! Our doctor here in Moldova told us to be very cautious about fish and try to avoid it unless it is from an ocean, which Moldova doesn't have. I am pretty sure the fish my family gets is from Moldova, who wants to pay the extra money to buy fish imported when you can buy it cheaply from a vendor in the piata(market) unrefridgerated and covered in flies. The fish in our house does seem clean and somewhat healthy. We were warned against the metal levels in the fish but as long as it is cooked well enough we shouldn't get any parasitic infections in our tummies. So far so good. I made the mistake the first day I met my host family by telling them I love fish, totally forgeting what Lica (the doctor) said. So now we eat it every other day or as of lately everyday, I had it twice yesterday. Most people have a wide variety of food in their freezers- bags of veggies, meat, icecream, etc. But not us!!! We have just fish, and not a little bit of it. It takes a some time to rearranged and pack "new catches" in. Hopefully I will come home as healthy as I left........We eat chicken every once in a while, I had it fried for breakfast a couple mornings ago.

MAMA MEA GAZDA ESTE ACASA

2006-09-29T13:18:00.000+03:00

"My host mom is home!" Last night I met my host mom for the first time. It was wonderful, she gave me a huge hug and kiss on the cheek and made me eat lots. She has been away at...um...a spa, I think. Through broken English and Romanian this is what I have deduced. She doesn't work at all and will be home all the time to cook me great food and plump me up for the "miserable, cold winter"(a quote from a host country national). The food has been amazing so far. Lots of potatoes (my favorite), lots of fresh vegetables and fruits, bread, pasta...speaking of pasta, I got to make ravioli the other night with my host sister, from scratch. It took us about two hours to make the dough, roll it out, fill it with brinza (sheep cheese), fold it up and boil it. We ate it covered in sour cream, it was gustos!!!! Whenever we have HUB Site days, where all of our group gets together for a full day a lectures and lessons, it is fun to compare the hearty lunches our mama gazdas give us, and it is always way more than any of us can eat. Many people might label me a picky eater, but not anymore. I have been eating everything, well except eggs and mayo, I may never give in to those. I had eggplant for the first time the other day, my oh my, it was delicious. Oh, I am getting so excited for lunch!!!

2006-09-23T17:11:00.000+03:00

Our chicken coup

The perks of having to go outside to use the bathroom

Outdoor toilet for nice weather

Our indoor toilet for the winter

My House

Our welcoming ceremony

Contact Info

2006-09-20T13:51:00.000+03:00

Here is the address of the Peace corps office where you can send me mail:
Jennifer Nelson
Peace Corps Moldova
12 Grigore Ureche Str.
Chisinau 2001, Moldova
**Don't send letters in regular envelopes, they will not get here!!!! People think they contain money because many people work abroad and send money back here to their families. Use either padded envelopes or big manilla type ones.

Here is how to call me:
011 + 373 + 268 + 26526
This is my home phone. Please, remember to call your phone company to make sure you don't have and international block on your phone and find out how much it is to call. I have heard you can call for 50 cents a minute (alot I know). Don't worry about calling me. Letters and email is good enough. But if you do call, remember there is a 10 hour time difference from the west coast to Moldova. Also, I am usually only home in the morning until 8 am and don't return until after 5pm.

Holy Crap! I am in Moldova!

2006-09-17T15:10:00.000+03:00

Alright, so I am here. I made it safely. I don't know where to start...
For starters, last night was closest to my first normal night of sleep. Since leaving Seattle I haven't slept more that 6 hours a night, usually about 4. I have been very tired and try to go to bed early but I can't sleep. Excitement and jetlag have kept me up staring at the ceiling all night. Last night was my first night out of Chisinau (pronounced quiche-now), the capital, staying with my host family, which is a whole new adventure. The past three days in the capital we have had all day language trainings, medical evaluations, and talks. I am now in the town of Ialoveni(yal-o-ven) with my host family. We met them yesterday around noon at our hotel. It was the worst anticipation ever. I was on the verge on hyperventilating, crying, and throwing up. I was terrified and excited to meet them. But once we met it was all ok. So, for my family. I have 2 brothers and one sister, and a mom and dad. They live in a normal size house with a garden surrounding the entire thing (no yard to play, maybe that is what the street is for- "game on") and they have a chicken coop with chickens and two ducks. When they get big enough we will eat them. The food has been great. Yesterday I ate fish which I was told not to eat and fruit washed in the tap water which I was also told not to eat. You will probably hear soon that I am sick, like always when I travel. For dinner we had mamalinga which is a cornmeal type bread/polenta/cornbread and I saw my host sister pick the worms out of the cornmeal while she was sifting it(uh-oh, more sickness on it's way). With this dense cornbread we had brinza(sheep milkcheese), sour cream(from a bag), fish, and a fish sauce that ws full of garlic(I was burping garlic all night). This meal is eaten with your hands and mixed together, it was good. The gross thing I tried yesterday was Kefir, sour milk. Oh my goodness it ws terrible. My sister and brother both speak english which won't be good for me learning Romanian, it is hard to be strict that they speak only Romanian because it is exhausting playing Charades for 12 hours a day. La revedere(bye) and stay tuned for more....

10 DAYS LEFT IN SEATTLE

2006-08-31T01:03:00.000+03:00

I can't believe I am leaving so soon! Only 10 more days until I will be boarding a plane to Philadelphia, and only 12 more days until I am leaving for Moldova! I am stressed, nervous, excited, scared...every emotion a person can feel I am feeling right now. I am actually really sick right now and I blame it on my stress of trying to pack up my apt., of trying to figure out what to pack, making sure I get everything done before I leave, making sure I see all my family and friends, etc, etc. My biggest fear right now isn't flying or not knowing the language when I arrive but that I won't pack correctly. I know there is no "right" way to pack but I am so scared of leaving something important behind even though I know I can have stuff shipped to me. I will be worried until I get there because it is only then will I know if I forgot anything. But I will make a list of things that people can send to me if they get bored and feel like sending a care package.