A Traveler's Soliloquy

New trails to blaze

2011-05-20T04:20:00.000-07:00

Good people, glad to see that you’ve made it to the end. I’ve had an abysmal showing these last several months with my blog posts, but after two years things have become a tad blasé, making it hard to come up with original, intriguing posts. I have a little less than two weeks left in Moldova, and it finally has started to set-in that my time here is dwindling. Constantly I have been asked how I feel about leaving, and although I have lots of conflicting emotions, I have found a surprising undercurrent of calm satisfaction that I didn’t think would exist within me.

Two years ago I was fraught with nerves before leaving for Peace Corps. I couldn’t sleep well, I couldn’t concentrate on my work, expectations and daydreams permeated my thoughts twenty-four hours a day, and I was anxious to embark on my journey. As I close this chapter I am still eager for the next adventure to begin, but there is a noticeable change in my attitude that I believe is due to a confidence I have found within myself. Under no circumstances do I think I have changed the world during my service, if anything I am more pragmatic after this experience. However, after two years of riding roller coasters, battling cultural differences, and enduring the most awkward situations you could believe, I have found a resiliency resonating within myself.

If you ask a Peace Corps Volunteer to reflect on their service, I guarantee you that the overwhelming majority will tell you that they received more than they gave. I am no exception. I have had the privilege to work with extremely capable, dedicated, and sincere Moldovans in my site, and I know that we have accomplished a great deal together. I can only hope that our efforts have, and will continue to make an impact in the community. It almost seems inhumane to invest so much time and energy into personal relationships to one day say goodbye and leave forever. Even if I never return, I will always hold a soft spot in my heart for my community and this country.

It wouldn’t be proper to end my blog without mentioning what I am most looking forward to and what I will miss, as cliché as it is. I will start off by saying that I am looking forward to going back to school and pursuing my master’s degree. Other things that I am looking forward to, and in no particular order are: winters with proper heating, clean clothes, drinkable tap water, bathrooms that don’t flood, hopefully a lack of alcoholic neighbors, not worrying about catching drug-resistant tuberculosis (and herpes), comfortable beds, a functional kitchen, being close to my family, and last but not least, spicy food.

As for what I will miss: I will miss my host family- Olga and Tudor are family, and I could not have made it this long without them. My friends that I have made here have also been my foundation. They have made the good times the best times, and assuaged the tough times. I will miss having my own apartment, even as shitty as it is. I will miss the sounds of the village- the roosters crowing all day, the clucking of hens, the children giggling outside. I will miss natural, organic, garden-fresh cheap produce, brinza cheese, impromptu masas, the congeniality and open-arm hospitality even when the host has next to nothing to give, a national identity, my running trails, house wine, village markets, Moldovaneste, bucolic scenery of vineyards, the randomness of each day, Saints’ Days and traditions, sarmale, and Ladas.

It isn’t important what I will not miss. As time goes on I am sure that my selective memory will fade out the negative, and only the good will remain. Moldova has changed during my two years here, and I only hope that life will become easier for the Moldovans. It is through the struggles of this country that I have learned just how precious freedom and democracy really are, and how difficult it can be to achieve. I have come to realize that when something is broken, it is our responsibility to fix it. It is our duty as Americans and citizens of the world to stand up and fight for our justice, democracy, and freedom to ensure that we will live in a world that is brighter tomorrow than it is today.

Thank you Moldova for helping me gain my sense of self, for concreting my values and morals, for opening my eyes to a new world, and providing me with a lifetime of memories. Thanks to everyone that has supported me, my projects, my family, or has simply read my blog during this time. I am off to Indonesia for the summer to learn the Bahasa Indonesia language, study sustainable tropical agriculture, and trail blaze around the world’s largest archipelago.

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchill

365 Days of Peace and Friendship Blog Post

2011-03-15T13:15:00.000-07:00

I recently posted a blog post for Peace Corps Moldova's blog that celebrates the 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps. Each day a volunteer writes a story about their work, their day, etcetera in efforts to highlight our work and our mission- spread peace and friendship worldwide. If you would like to read other stories and posts besides mine you can find them on the website www.365peaceandfriendship.com/home.

March 7th, 2011

Unpredictability is the name of the game in Peace Corps Moldova. That isn’t to say that we don’t have generalized routines, but after twenty-one months in Moldova I have come to embrace the fact that I usually do not know, nor do I want to know how my day will unfold. Some days I will wake up to the District Council’s driver at my door telling me that we have a seminar in another village that I am expected to attend, other days I will walk to work to find that I am the only person at my agriculture extension office that day. Monday March 7^th, 2011 was no exception, and it started off much like every morning begins for me.

Slowly but surely the weather is warming up, and by 7:30am the sun had permeated throughout my room. I prefer to wake up naturally instead of a blaring alarm, and the morning sun is a welcome development after months of cold, dark winter mornings. That’s not to say that the weather is warm outside. The ground is still frozen, the sidewalks (or sidewalk-esc paths alongside the road) are covered with hardened mud and ice, and my apartment still doesn’t have running water due to frozen pipes. However unpredictable my day, I can always count on my morning routine: Wake up, fetch water from the well outside, fire up the stove to make coffee and cașha (oatemeal), and then settle down to the previous day’s Daily Show and breakfast in bed (Who said spreading peace and friendship didn’t have its perks?)

I live on the outskirts of a small commercial center and have a twenty-minute walk to work. Usually I greet my neighbors going to work, babas coming back from the market, and children playing hookie from school. However on this particular day I noticed that I didn’t pass anyone on the street, nor were there any cars or horse carts going into town. I reached the center and happened to pass my neighbor Ion, an old păznic (security guard) getting off his graveyard shift at a construction firm. We exchanged the formal greetings before I curiously asked him why the town was so quiet. Quite matter-of-factly he explained that everyone had the day off because the next day was the Women’s Day holiday.

I decided to keep on keeping on and made it to my office to find that I was the only one in the building. This isn’t my first rodeo, and I am quite accustomed to being generally out of the loop when it comes to Moldovan holidays. Normally I am inadequately informed the day of about meetings, seminars, and holidays (religious, quasi-religious, or fictitious), and it isn’t unusual for my partners to forget to mention that we don’t have work on a particular day. It is assumed that I am in the know about every birthday party planned for someone working on our floor, and every holiday warranting a meat platter and a bottle of house wine, which are in no shortage in Moldova.

Not to let the holiday deter me from having a somewhat productive day, I decided to make the most of the downtime at the office to finish up some on-going work. Several hours went by before I started to hear the bass bumping of an Akon song, laughter, and the whooping sounds of a gaggle of Moldovan women getting down to a pre-Women’s Day celebration. One of the best things about Moldova is that the people are extremely hospitable and open, and Women’s Day is no exception. Out of curiosity (boredom) I made my way down to the office where the noise was originating. I found nine women that work in the building dancing, laughing, and eating. I knew several of them, and was immediately instructed to join in on the festivities.

Usually I’m not big on midday dance parties, and Moldovan house wine imbibing makes it hard to go on an afternoon run in the fields. However, I have come to deeply respect the role of the Moldovan woman, and am in constant awe of their resilience to their expected responsibilities. Not only do they rear the children, but they also cook every meal, keep the house clean, work the gardens and the fields, do the shopping, hold a full time job, and take care of the animals all while assuming a subservient role to their husbands and men in general. At the office party I made sure to express my sincere respect for the women, and they seemed to enjoy the part where I said that the country truly would not be able to function if it wasn’t for their efforts and determination.

I stayed at the party for nearly two hours, and I reveled in my role as the only male in the dance circle. It is days like this that make me appreciate my job, and it is because of days like this that help me realize that to truly excel at being a PCV you need to be open to anything, and ready to celebrate each day and all it’s opportunities. Finally and most importantly, I want to give all of you reading this the chance to participate in Peace Corps’ mission of spreading peace and friendship across the world, no matter if you are man or woman, old or young, RPCV or hopeful PCV. I charge you all to call the women most important in your life and express your gratitude and your love. As true as it is here in Moldova, I believe that the world and all the countries in it would not be able to function without the un-praised efforts of women.

Happy (pre) Women’s Day!

Women's Day also happened to be on Mardi Gras and instead of buying flowers I decided to keep to my roots and make a homemade king cake. I learned several things from this experience- King cakes are ridiculously harder to make than regular cakes. Villages in Moldova do not sell food coloring or miniature plastic babies. Lastly, do not underestimate the power of yeast, or else you will end up with a huge, round king cake with no hole in the center. It did come out quite tasty though.

This is the picture of my host family reenacting the events of the morning when their grandson Vlad and my host dad Tudor gave Olega, host mom, flowers for Women's Day.

Moldovan Masas

2011-01-23T12:30:00.000-08:00

Well hello there. Bine ai venit. I would like to say that I’ve been neglecting my blog because of work demands, but that might be overdoing it. I’m not saying that I haven’t been working, quite the contrary actually, however it is just that we’ve been in holiday season for a month and a half and ordinary life is just now resuming. This past Thursday the 20^th marked the last of the major celebrations (hopefully) with the passing of Saint John the Baptist Day. There was a striking contrast between the holidays this year and last, and it was nice to know before hand what I was getting myself into this go round. It is quite shocking the first year when you barely speak the language and then are subjected to Christmas on December 25, New Years on January 1, Old Christmas on January 7, Old New Year on January 14, St. John the Baptist Day on the 20, and a host of other random, quasi-religious holidays thrown in between. Not misconstrue and overhype the celebrations I think it is necessary to clarify what goes down at a Moldovan sarbartoare .

Moldovan holidays, birthdays, village celebrations, and any other run-of-the-mill holiday you can think are practically interchangeable. First and foremost you must have your meat patties. These come in two types, the first is called perijoale and are tastly, egg-shaped meaty morsels delicately spiced with salt, pepper, garlic, and onions. The second type that usually shares a plate with the perijoale is your haphazard, mashed and fried mystery meat cut into finger-long strips. These can be quite delicious, but only if you catch them freshly out of the kitchen. Believe you me, there is nothing more bland than that of two-day old soft-battered mystery meat. Then you’ve got your plate(s) of sausage and cheese. Nothing very fancy here, and sometimes this is the safest bet to go with when you are unsure how many hours/days the rest of the food has been sitting out. Now we move onto the fish. Typically for larger masas, you’ll find what I believe to be smoked sardines out of a can, and a type of raw fish swimming in oil. Not once have I seen the fish served without a lemon slice and a jar of pickled black olives. Then you’ve got a plate full of baked chicken, stuffed grape leafs or stuffed peppers, and a hot plate of stewed cabbage, carrots, onions, and meat. These will be the last items served since the progression of a masa is from cold, to warm or once warm, and finally your hot food. It takes time to develop masa-pacing skills, and it’s a rookie move to fill up too early. Guaranteed you will be forced to eat the remaining courses no matter how much you protest or how full you are. Side dishes include potato-mayo-corn-fake crab salads, chicken salad, and copious amounts of bread stacked next to your plate.

Throughout each meal there is always a bottle of carbonated water, house wine, and possibly champagne or cognac. In almost two years I’ve only been to one dry masa, and man was it weird (In the hosts defense they are Mormons, and no matter what a Mormon masa is strange place for non-Mormons due to abstinence of caffeine and booze). If there is champagne then that will come first, then the cognac shots follow, but these can be substituted for house wine. The house wine is more of staple, like water at an American meal, and I can’t begin to recount the times I’ve been told, “Neal, you’re young. You should be the one drinking the cognac and us drinking the (insert water or wine here).” Hospitality methods are not universally exchangeable, and the sooner this is realized the sooner one can start to really appreciate the culture and start to relax. It just so happens that in Moldova the face of hospitality is a large Moldovan woman demanding you eat more food while her husband snidely fills up your shot glass and gives you this look that says “Ah-ha! Gotcha! Now you have to drink it since I’ve poured it.” They make quite the dynamic duo, and bless their hearts, it is sometimes the easiest form of communication between a host and a foreigner barely grasping the language. It only gets easier with time though.

As for exceptions, there is always a slightly differing smorgasbord offered from house to house, naturally. However the dishes I have described are numai decît always, and I do mean always, going to be at a masa. Occasionally you will have rachituri, a bowlful of salty gelatin with a cold piece of baked chicken or pork congealed in the center. It’s a shame that the American palate is only accustomed to sweet foods being in this coagulated state, because Moldovans seemingly love this stuff and lick the bowls clean while their foreign guests sit back in a state of awe and disbelief. Other than that you have dyed red eggs and lamb for Easter, and overflowing platefuls of cake and sweets for desert.

In closing I’ll give you several anecdotes I’ve come to notice about this fair country and myself:

· Besides the roma there is an overwhelming monoculture of racial diversity in Moldova. There are absolutely zero, no joke, zero people of minorities that live in my town, and it seems that Romania and the rest of Europe have attracted the majority of the roma away from Moldova. Whenever I was in Oslo recently I found myself jaw-on-the-floor staring at black people, Indians, and hajib totting Muslims due simply to the fact that I have been surrounded by anglos for the past year and a half. In no way am I prejudice towards people of different ethnic backgrounds or religious beliefs, it is simply an alarming part of culture shock after being in the trenches for so long (figure of speech).

· Moldovans are always fascinated by how much money people make in other countries, how good the quality of life is, and like to follow it up by stating that they have a tough life but “Moldova isn’t Africa”.

· It is a merciless environment at times for learning a language and Moldovans have a habit of carping every aspect of your life. For instance- If you are with another volunteer that has a better Romanian accent than you then you can bet on them commenting that she/he speaks way better than you do. If you didn’t sleep very well/gained a little weight during masa season/have mud on your shoes then you should expect the comments “Wow what happened? You look (fat/terrible/like you need a woman to wash your clothes and shoes).

· A sustained alcohol binge is called “being in delirium”. Word to the wise, if your electrician has been delirious for the past two weeks, it might not be a good idea for him to work with the electricity in your house.

· It can sometimes be rude to say that someone is drunk, and often times women will tell you that their husbands are tired or resting instead of passed out cold.

· As a male I am always asked if I have a woman. No matter what the answer I am told that I need a Moldovan woman. Many times I am told I need an additional woman to the one previously entailed- or as literally translated “You need a whore on the side”.

· For two weeks after St. John the Baptist Day you cannot wash your clothes. If you are unaware of this social norm, then your neighbors will passively ridicule your landlords for not keeping their American in-line.

· Instead of telling the children (or the local Peace Corps volunteer) that the family pet died or “went to a farm”, Moldovans will tell them that the dog or cat was stolen.

· Because of Romanian I now speak more affected English, and am constantly referring to moods or preferences as a “disposition”.

Turkey kills and Grease Fires

2010-12-01T10:46:00.000-08:00

December has arrived with the furry. Today is definitely the coldest day since last winter. I naively stepped out of my house this morning headed to work in jeans, boots, and a fleece only to be abruptly halted by arctic winds blowing at a bone chilling 20 degrees F. Immediately I retreated back inside to imbrac mai bine and put on long johns, a scarf, gloves, and a soviet aviator beanie. Last week we had our first snow(s) and on Black Friday the clouds dumped nearly three to four inches of snow only to have it melted away Sunday with a heat wave. Today is snowless, however all the melted snow puddles left in the pot-holed riddled streets are frozen solid. The long autumn is officially over. Hello five months of winter.

Life on this side of the pond has been as caprice as ever, although now that I’m well into the second year of my service there is a more routine resonance to my life. I was right in the middle of finishing up a project to replace corroded pipes and refurbish a water tower/well when my partner on the project landed herself in the hospital. From the differing stories, hearsay rather, I have pieced together that she either had spleen surgery or a kidney transplant. Either way it doesn’t sound ideal. Selfishly irritated that the one person that has constantly been my professional guide and partner for a year and a half now is indefinitely out of the office, I am worried about my productivity and effectiveness as a volunteer for the next seven months. That sounds terrible to actually admit, but this woman, who is like my Moldovan grandmother, has been a godsend to me and is the shaker and mover in our office. We’ll have to wait a see how her recovery and my remaining service pans out.

This year Thanksgiving was much more comfortable and forgiving than the previous year’s. It might have been due to the fact that I’m now settled into my life in this country, the gathering was smaller, the food was indescribably better(sorry PSN), it was at my house, and my closest friends, except one that met up with his parents in Israel, were there with me to celebrate the holiday and give thanks to everything we are blessed with. While I’m writing this I can’t help but compare and contrast Thanksgiving to Ramadan. While we pile our plates to the brim with turkey and gravy to give thanks for our cornucopian lifestyle, our health, and our family, the period of Ramadan similarly gives thanks and recognizes the fact that they are alive, healthy, and grateful for all that they have. Strikingly enough though one culture fasts for a month to appreciate the fact that they have been blessed, and another culture binges. Strange.

This year I had five of my friends come up for a Thanksgiving meal in my village. Because of the workweek we decided to have Ziua de Mulțumire, Thanksgiving, on Saturday. Friday morning my friend Dan and I set off for the market to pick up our 8-kilogram live turkey. Talk about an experience. We paid the man, threw the turkey in a sack, and headed home giggling like schoolgirls because we were totting a live bird Santa-style. We waited for everyone else to arrive before the turkey kill, because truly that is one experience that you have to witness at least once in your life to fully appreciate where your fat, perfectly plucked turkey with a pre-inserted thermometer comes from each November. We were gathered around the chopping block with cameras out when I got cold feet and had to delegate the first blow to my old, weathered Moldovan neighbor. I was charged with the task of cutting the head off before the bird had succumbed to its sacrificial Thanksgiving grave so blood could drain out. After the turkey-kill, we brought the headless bird into my kitchen where we were instructed how to pluck the feathers, eviscerate the innards, and lightly torch the small hairs and feathers that were impossible to remove with our hands.

For two days we slaved in my ill equipped kitchen. We prepared mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, cornbread, stuffing, deviled eggs, gumbo (although that was first dinner Friday night), mac and cheese, chocolate chip cookies, chicken salad, and of course, turkey. I will never, ever, take for granted the ladies (and men) charged with preparing Thanksgiving feasts, or any celebration, from here on out after experiencing this arduous process first hand. The bird was alone a chore and a half. I would like to note that my oven is not what you would exactly consider up-to-code. Quite frankly, it’s a piece of shit. The dials on the stove are falling off, the stove has to be lit with a match at the open flame located at the bottom of the oven cavity, and it is virtually impossible to guess the setting or temperature of the stove besides gauging how high you set the flame. Occasionally the flame will go out without warning, and everything has to be removed to light it again. A meat thermometer proved to be too large a request for Moldova, so we charged forth with slight reservation but no hesitation. Three hours into the cooking time we were putting the bird back in the oven after a basting when the pan fell off the stripped guides in the oven. Dan and myself were both scrambling to retrieve the bird off the ajar oven door when an enormous grease-induced fireball exploded out of the oven singing the hairs off our arms and eyebrows. One of the girls screamed and ran looking for a bucket to throw water on the fire, but was halted by our screaming protests not to put water on a grease fire. After the fire died and the grease was left smoking, we cautiously decided to commence the cooking and we nervously eyed the oven while airing out the smoke from the house.

After five hours cooking the birded we pulled it out only to find it TV-worthy golden brown and succulent. The meal was a huge success and at four in the afternoon we all sat down to a feast fit with all the trimmings, and 20 liters of house wine that I was forced to carry around in old gas cans. We all toasted and individually shared our blessings of thanks, and proceeded to savor the fruits of our labor. Afterwards, in a tryptophan and wine induced delirium, we all took a two-hour nap before I had my Moldovan friends come over to share another Thanksgiving meal. I have never seen a group of people rally so fast from a comatose state to setup for meal number two. The second meal was as wildly successful as the first, and it was just as jovial and merry in Romanian as it was in English.

The holidays are always peculiar when spent away from family in another country, but I’m thankful to have such close friends, American and Moldovan, to share a meal and make this year a very special Thanksgiving for me. No telling what the future Thanksgiving holds in store for me. I only hope that wherever I am, whomever I’m with, it will come close to the joie de vivre that this Thanksgiving will always mean to me. Happy holidays everyone, and thank you for reading.

The Eyes of October

2010-10-26T03:46:00.000-07:00

Timpul trece- time passes, and it passes rather quickly. The month of October has come and is soon to go. Beginning the month the leaves were just starting to show signs of autumn, and now as I sit looking outside I see nothing but yellow, orange, red, brown and green foliage. There is crispness in the air, and tenderness under foot. The weather is pock marked with cold rainy days intermittent with piercing, bluebird skies. The corn has been cut, shucked, and stored. The land is being tilled in preparation for the hard winter freeze. Fruits and vegetables have been stashed away in jars of salt water in dark corners in basements. Outside I can hear the slow, and rhythmic chock, thump, chock, thump of the neighbor chopping wood for his fireplace. Occasionally a passerby calls out the customary phrase “Doamne ajuta!” wishing the woodcutter assistance from God. Babas bundled in seven layers of wool all adorning vibrant headscarves huddle around the sunny patches in the village market totting jars of salty goat cheese and homemade sour cream for sale. Pressed grape skins sit rotting in the back-corners of peoples’ yards omitting a sour smell of fermented wine.

In preparation for the changing of the seasons my apartment windows and doors are now sealed off to the elements outside. The double paned windows have been outfitted with plastic strips at the sills and will remain locked until the hinting summer breeze comes blowing in May. Extra sets of doors have been installed as an additional barrier for the doors leading outdoors. My basement is now stocked with wood that I have chopped, carried, and stacked by hand. Plastic siding has been plastered to the exterior walls as a first layer of defense. My fireplace has now been given a makeover and is now dually equipped to burn wood and gas. Lately, I have been joking with my over-protective landlord that if it gets too cold in his gas-heated apartment that he is welcome to come live with me in my what-appears-to-be bomb shelter.

We have been doing a lot of work lately with finishing up the soba-fireplace project at the orphanage in town. We had some difficultly getting approval from the neighbors allowing the gas line to go through his yard, and then only to be slowed down further when the contractor refused to work anymore. But the good news is that that project is now finished and the kids have a warm house to come home to and keep them warm at night. We have also been rocking and rolling on my other two projects and we have started to install the gas line to the kitchen at the Children’s Center here in town. Soon we will be able to start on the project in Ratuș at the rural health center. I doubt if we will be able to start the work this late in the year, but at least that gives us sufficient time to plan for the spring. The other work that I am looking forward to is a joint project with my sitemate’s organization that focuses on child development. We are in the planning stages of starting a greenhouse to use as a demonstration plot for the kids. I’ve wanted to get involved with a project of this sort since I arrived in my village over a year ago, and I hope that I can end my Peace Corps service on a good note of this caliber.

It hasn’t been all work and no play though. I’ve been able to travel around and experience the culture quite a bit these past couple months. I took a trip down south to the Bulgarian/Russian speaking district center of Taraclia to visit my friend Aaron. It was great getting to check out his site, interact with the baba he lives with, and see traditional dances at a concert in the center of town. I also visited one of Moldova’s larger wineries and tasted their selection of wines with relish. Lastly, I was able to attend the Farm Expo in Chisinau this past weekend. Wandering around tractors and combines ranging in prices from hundred of thousands to millions of dollars is always an experience, especially in Moldova when you are used to the 50 horsepower, older-than-dirt Soviet tractors that are widely popular.

As you can see life is good. I hope you all are having a pleasant fall and are preparing for the holidays. I’ll be seeing you in November!

A Winter Worth a Thousand Words

2010-09-30T10:32:00.001-07:00

What historical references would one have to have to claim that a winter will be the coldest in 1,000 years? The rumor as of late in Moldova is exactly that- this will be the worst winter in a millennium. This has been hard for me to wrap my brain around; maybe because I am already suspicious of daily weather reports, much less weather-claims dating back before the Crusades even began. If this holds true I will have lost all faith in my Eastern European Lonely Planet guidebook. Quoting purely from memory, “Moldova has temperate summers and mild winters.” Bullshit. I might have to make the switch to Frommers if this winter does shape up to be worst than last. Maybe it’s my southern heritage, but there is just something about a cold, gray winter day that lets you savor a bad mood.

I’m noticing a trend that I like to start off each blog post talking about the weather. I attribute that to fact that this is my go-to conversation with strangers in this country. It should be interesting to see how it all plays out. I distinctly remember my host mom telling me last spring that it was going to be a cool summer because we had such a cold winter. Tell that to all my shirts with permanent deodorant/sweat pit stains showing through under each arm. Either way it’s a win-win situation for me this winter. It’s either going to be bone numbing cold and I’ll have an extra little swagger in my step knowing that I can make it through two of the worst Moldova winters predating the Magna Carta, or it won’t be so bad and I won’t be constantly speculating how much longer by toes have got before they get frostbite.

Time has been flying by. I came to the realization that I have a hair over nine months left in Moldova. I’ve still got a long list of things on my Moldova To-Do list, and much of it has to do with harvesting and wine making. I guess I had better get to it. Even after nearly 16 months in country I still get the reply “Neal, you don’t want to go work out in the fields. It’s dirty and it’s hard. Go enjoy your time with your friends” whenever I ask my partners and friends if I can help. I’m not going to candy coat it- this hurts and is somewhat insulting. I know that they see this as a chore, but living and working as Moldovans live is one of the main reasons I joined the Peace Corps. It seems like the only chance I have at getting my hands dirty are by walking into the fields and asking a random stranger if I can help. Ninety-nine percent of the time these people are thrilled that they get free labor and I’m sure one day I’ll get strapped to a plow and that will be the last I see of the farmer. It would be nice one day to be able to help out without having to go through my windup speech of how this crazy America ended up out in the middle of nowhere, speaking pigeon Romanian, and asking to help cut corn.

I have decided that if I’m not going to be in the fields picking grapes this weekend, I might as well be enjoying the fruits of the labor. A friend and I are going to visit Chateau Vartley, one of the major wineries in Moldova that is conveniently located about an hour from me. This will be the first time going there for me so I’m pretty excited. I will be sure to include lots of pictures to make you all jealous the next time I blog. Fiți sanitoș!

What happened to fall?

2010-09-15T03:33:00.000-07:00

Hello all. Much has gone on in Moldova since my last update. I feel like this slow Sunday evening is a good of time as any to send out an update. The changing of the weather has been a force to be reckoned with as of late. The weather has been overcast, cold, and rainy for the past two weeks, which has induced a melancholy affect on my mood. The looming presence of winter scares the shit out of me, because in no way am I prepared to battle six months of well-below freezing temperatures, snow drifts, ice patches, and canned veggies quite yet. All I can do now is sit tight, shut up, and hold on.

Several weeks ago I hosted a get together for what turned out to be nine fellow PCVs for my village’s hram. I had a great time, and I’m glad that I was able to show off my village to my peers. I might have overextended myself because my house was a rockin’ 24/7 for nearly four consecutive days with almost a dozen Americans. It seems like everyone enjoyed themselves though, and my friend Vascia that lives in a small village nearby really helped escalate the festivities by inviting us all to his family’s house for a Moldovan masa and lake swimming afterwards. The next day there were concerts in the center of town and I had the opportunity to give everyone a taste of Louisiana’s world famous Cajun cookin’. I must say though, after four days of hosting guests in a house that has hidden quarks, lack of sleep, and lots of cooking and cleaning, I was utterly exhausted afterwards. In many ways I’m glad that there is only one big event in my town a year, because I think my days of hosting that many people at my house are over.

I’m still traversing mountains at work. We are finally wrapping up the orphanage-heating project that started at the beginning of the summer, which has been a slight nuisance because I have been trying to open up another grant of the same type, but can’t have two out in my name at the same time. So, that is good news. Also, my search for finding a donor(s) for a rural health clinic has provided several potential financiers. All I have to do now is put the finishing touches on the project proposal and we are rocking and rolling. With the impending winter it seems like everyone is scrambling to get their crops harvested, finish on-going projects, and buckle down all the hatches.

As of late, I’ve had a renewed interest in cooking. I’ve stolen my mother’s gumbo and jambalaya recipes and have been using my friends as test subjects to perfect the Moldova-Cajun infusion. If anyone is reading this in country and feel like giving your taste buds a wake-up call, then hit me up. One thing that shows that I probably have too much free time on my hands is because I’ve found that making a vegetable broth, and then using that to cook rice in, elevates the flavor two-fold.

Since it has taken several days to actually write this blog post, I am sitting at work right now listening to a meeting with all our agriculture consultants in the other room. These monthly meetings are always interesting to observe from an outsider’s perspective because they will be yelling at each other for two hours, and then once the meeting ends and the masa is setup, they turn back into the best of friends. Sometimes I like to run out before the meal gets going, because I usually like to avoid midday wine, cognac, sausage, and cake. I’ve been feeling slightly removed from reality lately so I think I might stick around for this one. Happy trails everyone. Noroc.

Back to It

2010-08-25T07:34:00.000-07:00

The following pictures are from Mereni, Moldova where I helped out with a childrens camp my friend Dan put on in his village. Poftim:

Walking to Dan's, another PCV, house.

Girl's got an arm on her.

Attempting kickball.

Choosing teams.

Sharing experiences in the classroom.

The human knot!

Gathering everyone together for an activity.

Choosing the site for Sports Day at a children's camp.

Ah yes, alas, a new blog post. I recently returned home to the States for a brief vacation to attend my sister’s wedding. While there I updated most of you (my blog’s readers) in person so you should probably stop reading now (just kidding). Summer is coming to a close and with that means the 95+ degree temperatures are soon to be over, and harvest season will be upon us. That also means all the fresh summer produce is getting thrown into jars of saltwater and stored away in basements; sad thing for me is that I don’t have a basement. I’ve lived through a winter eating nothing but canned foods already, and I’ve got to say, besides the canned peaches it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be.

Work wise I have been grinding through the introductory phases of several grants. This is very much a process- at times it can be discouraging, but every now and then the skies open up and the sunlight aluminates our dedication. Other than that, I’ve been teaching a fair amount of computer lessons, and have gotten to opportunity to work with kids in several different summer camps.

As I mentioned earlier, I recently returned from a trip back home. Well, home was only part of it. I spent three days in Baton Rouge, and the rest of the time on Orcas Island off the coast of Seattle. It was great to go home although I overextended myself and was scraping the bottom of the barrel halfway through trying to find the energy just to stand. The place itself is funny; in some ways it seems as if everything has changed, and in others it is exactly the same. I can iterate how much it meant to see my family and spend time with my friends. It was definitely difficult saying goodbye, especially knowing that after every vacation you take you experience a twinge of post-vacation blues. The worst was coming back from Turkey in the winter (In Istanbul it was sunny and 60 degrees, Moldova was -5), and I went through a two-week slump. I can finally say that I have rounded the corner and have experienced a January-in-August moment, and have set new goals and aspirations for my second year of service.

Adjustment back to the village life is actually quite amusing, it’s almost like coming back from the dead in some ways. When I greet people on the street they always, without fail, say “We thought you left for good. How was America? Is it better than here?” My answer to this question is second nature now, and I honestly believe in what I tell them. America isn’t better than Moldova- it’s merely different. Sure the level of development is lacking in Moldova, but the traditions, values, and closeness of the Moldovan culture is something to be admired. You often hear stories of PCVs returning home to America and going through a severe culture shock. I can’t say that’s how it was for me. Sure, I experienced it to a slight degree. It was quite overwhelming hearing English everywhere, flushing toilet paper in the toilets, and the endless amounts of produce in the grocery store, but what really got to me was the realization of how much time we, as Americans, spend in transit. Think about how much time you actually spend in your car per day. I had to run errands over the several days I was home and it is absurd thinking that just running to the grocery store, to a friend’s house, and back was over an hour in the car, if not more. I think back on all the trips to Starbucks for the sole purpose of getting coffee. I mean COFFEE, what the hell, I could have easily put in a filter in my coffee pot, poured in the grinds and water, pressed a button, and within three minutes have a steaming cup of quality joe in my hands (I say quality because when you subsist off nothing but instant coffee, ground coffee tastes like heaven). Instead I, like many others, decided to get in my car, drive 10-15 minutes down the road, pull through the drive thru listening to talk radio, pay nearly five dollars for a coffee, and then take the drive back. Absolutely ridiculous. OK, I’m done ranting.

A week and a half has gone by and slowly I am able to tune out the roosters in the morning, and the dogs at night. Also one of the more prominent indicators that I am adjusting back to village life is that all my clothes are starting to get that worn look again and are probably omitting a slight odor. I guess it’s time to throw them in the garden tub and get to work. Sitting here now I notice a large drip stain on my brand new pants and am paranoid that it won’t come out, no matter how hard I scrub.

I’m at work now and really need to get back on the grind. My village’s hram is this weekend and I am planning on inviting some friends up for the celebration. Refer back to my post from last August about this particular celebration. I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures and update you all. For now, adios.

Top of Mt. Constitution. Orcas Island, Washington.

Posh living, no joke

2010-07-01T23:08:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the virtual tour of my nattily furnished apartment. Every day it exceeds my expectations and it is crazy to be living in such laps of luxury. First off as you walk up to my apartment building you will see that I am the only apartment with a corner entrance. The picture below is my apartment on the ground floor with the yellow gas line running overhead.

This is a closer shot. My garden is quite verdant right now and I need to get out there and do some serious work with my sapa (hoe).
Even closer...
The view from my patio. There is usually a bunch of chickens, roosters, geese, and dogs running around the yard. The bench in the middle is also a hot spot for me to socialize with my neighbors or read a book.
Another view from my patio. In the pots I've got seedings of cucumber, oregano, cilantro, and basil growing. This is also where I hang my clothes to dry after I hand wash them in the tub.
Below is the first room you walk into upon entering. I usually keep my front door open with the curtain pulled so I get a fresh breeze.
The room wraps around and from this view you can see my work table, my soba (wood/coal burning fireplace that will keep me warm in the winter) and the door leading to my kitchen.
Ah ha! My kitchen. That's right, I've got gaz. The oven doesn't work and the water works half of the time (it either comes out bone white or not at all).
Going through the kitchen you reach my music room. That's right, I've got a piano. It's older than dirt and the keys don't work very well, but I've still got one. In the left hand corner is my deep freezer that I don't use unless I'm having a bunch of people over and need to cool down some piva (russian for beer).
After going through my music hallway it forks into another hallway. To the left is my bedroom, the right is my guest bedroom/greenhouse, and straight ahead is the bathroom. Below is a picture of the guest bedroom.

In the window sill of the guest bedroom I have 8 cherry tomato seedlings growing. They aren't really faring too well right now, but I've got hope...

Turning around and going out the guest room and straight ahead is my bedroom. The rug on the wall sometimes trips me out, but it's too Moldovan to take down. On the left is nothing but closet space, and to the right is a mirror with pictures of family/friends, and a bookshelf.

Lastly, we have reached my bathroom. As you can see I've got a lovely swan tiled mural that helps you drift into a nebulous tranquility when you are taking a bath. Above the tub is my hot water heater that I've named Buster. We don't get along too well because Buster likes to flood the apartment on occasion. I know it sounds weird that I've named my water heater, but I live alone and it seems perfectly normal for me to scold it when I come home and find a lake in my bathroom. Oh PC, thanks for making me weird(er)...

This is another shot of my bathroom to capture all it's glory. When my water doesn't work I use the backup storage tank on the left. It's a catch 22 because this also leaks. Buster has a power cord tail that plugs into the socket in the hall to heat up. It takes a couple hours to heat up enough water for a bath, but the good thing is is that it holds the heat a long time after unplugging it. Usually about a week.

That concludes this tour. Thanks for stopping by. I have another room in the middle which I didn't show you because I don't use it. My landlord has some storage stuff in there, but he said if I have a lot of people come over and need the space I can feel free to use it. I've got plenty of room for company so anyone that wants to take a great trip off the beaten path come on over. I'll be waiting. Norok.

Coffee breaks

2010-07-01T03:03:00.000-07:00

Vaca

My host mom posing

Host grandpa with his pigs

The fields are a growin'

Norok oameni. I’ve got a free moment to kill while I’m here at work seeing that I can’t seem to pay attention to the Word document I am working on. I attribute this fact that we just had an impromptu wine, placenta (national dish that is a fried sandwich with either cheese, cabbage, cherry, pumpkin, or potatoes inside), honey, and tomato party in our small conference room. This is a normal occurrence when my main partner Petru is out of town. The lady partner that I work with, Larissa, who is probably the sweetest old lady you could ever imagine once you get to know her, loves to invite her friends in our building over for a midday snack. Also, we occasionally have all our consultants come into our office one or two days a month, and like magic, a large masa full of food and wine appears at the end of the meeting. Business in Moldova revolves around personal contacts, and it is important that you partake in the breaking of bread. For my birthday my partners called me up at 8 in the morning and told me that we had a seminar in an hour. This is a somewhat regular occurrence so I put on my clothes, ate a quick breakfast, and hit the road. Upon getting to work I was greeted by a large table full of traditional Moldovan food and spirits. Gotta love it.

Lately I’ve been getting overrun with workmen and water and gas “controllers”. I’ve been having a problem with my water pipes in my apartment, and like clockwork once I turn on the hot water heater my bathroom floods. My landlord has been calling several different repairmen for this issue to no avail. Also, the gas and water companies have been coming by to check my meters, they call these meter readers “controllers”. I don’t know why they don’t install the meters outside of the houses, especially since these people come at the worst possible times of the day (when I’m taking a nap). I’ve decided to turn it into a tea party, and instead of getting upset that I have people barging in on me at all times of the day, I politely ask if they would like to have coffee or tea with me. To my surprise, I am yet to be turned down. This morning actually I was telling a telephone repairman about my regular visits from the water controllers, and how in America they do it differently. He got a funny look on his face and asked me if I had ever been to America before. I thought he was kidding at first and so I replied “Once or twice”, but then realized that he was dead serious. I took it as a huge complement that after ten minutes of continuous dialogue he couldn’t make me out for a phony butchering his native language.

I’ve been going into the capital regularly for training with the new volunteers. When I returned the other day the gas in my apartment wasn’t working. I figured that I hadn’t paid the gas bill yet so I went to the post office to check and see. As I thought, I had already paid for the gas at the beginning of the month. I figured the gas would come back on within a day or two, because that’s just how things work here. After three days I still didn’t have any gas and I was getting tired of not being able to cook anything. Racking my brain for a way to have a hot meal, I decided that I would try to cook pelmeni (meat stuffed pasta you can buy at the store) in my chainik (water boiler for tea). This method worked beautifully. The second day of me boiling my pelmeni in my chainik my landlord came by and asked me what I was doing; I responded that my gas wasn’t working so I was preparing my noodles in my water boiler. Man, did he laugh at me. He told me that since I had been going out of town so much that he turned the gas nozzle off just in case there was a gas leak. Worst part about it is that the nozzle is about eye level on the wall directly above the stove. Oh cultural differences…

Happy 4^th of July and hopefully everyone has a safe holiday. I will be going to the annual 4^th of July Picnic the US Embassy throws in Chisinau. Last year it got pretty wild with an open bar and a Michael Jackson CD playing on a loop to commemorate his death. Hai devi!

Water Tower pictures

2010-06-23T03:01:00.001-07:00

The truck we got to load the PCV pipe for the water project.

On the left is one of my Ag Extension consultants and on the right is the head of the pipe factory giving us a tour.

Drilling into the aquifer.

The good life

2010-06-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

It’s quite a lovely day in this small, tucked away corner of Europe. The sun is shining, the roosters are cockadoodle-dooing, and the kids are merrily playing outside. For the past week it’s been brutally hot, but for the last two days we’ve been getting afternoon storms that have cooled things off a considerable amount. I know that I’ve been slacking with the blog, but instead of weekly posts I will be switching to bimonthly posts.

Last week the new group of volunteers to Moldova arrived, all sixty-nine of them. Ten mentors, myself included, and several people from PC staff anxiously waited for their arrival at the small, janky airport in Chisinau. We were all very excited for the new arrivals, and it was great being able to have a change of perspective and see what we all looked like coming in country only one short year ago. As a joke all, or at least most, of the male volunteers grew mustaches under the pretense that it was for community integration into small villages. Shortly after the newbies arrived you could hear a mummer of “They all have mustaches…” and then finally we started yielding their questions as to why. Most were quite mystified and one guy actually started panicking and saying “I mean I think I could grow a goatee, but I just don’t know about a mustache. Would that work?”

After several days in the capital we packed everyone onto their respective buses and sent them on their way. I remained in Chisinau to prepare a presentation on Social Networking and Communication for Pre Service Training and after nearly a week of being away from home I finally made it back yesterday. It’s really quite odd, but when I’m away from my village for an extended stretch of time I always experience a twinge of anxiety. It only lasts for several hours, and I usually wake up the next morning after a good night’s sleep in my own bed feeling relaxed and at peace. It’s good to be home though, and I’m glad to have saved my potted plants from the brink of dehydration. I have to keep them inside because my landlord told me that they would get stolen if I left them outdoors. I told him the world is more similar than we probably believe.

Right now I’m working on finishing up a grant for a compost demonstration plot I think I have mentioned before. Getting the information from this guy has been harder than getting a kid to take a bath, and I have come to appreciate the American “Let’s get shit done” business mentality. Other than that I am trying to start a kids summer camp that will focus on agriculture, environmental awareness, and volunteerism. The youth of Moldova also fall into the global trend away from the agriculture sector, and it is vital for the sustainability of the country that the youth be taught the importance of modern agricultural practices. Also, after all the environmental degradation that occurred from Soviet policies, they could usea good dose of environmental awareness education. Ideally, I would like to have presentations and interactive workshops teaching the kids about animal husbandry, greenhouses, beekeeping, composting, irrigation, alternative methods and fuels, recycling, tree grafting, and species varities. To finish up the camp I am going to try and get the Primaria (mayor’s office) or the Școala to designate an area that we can help clean up, paint a classroom, etc, to inspire the idea of volunteering in the community (which is nonexistent concept here). If all goes well and the kids have fun, I think it would be really cool to run with the idea and start to start a monthly volunteer club and work on various service projects within the village. If this is going to happen before school starts I’m going to have to kick into high gear, spread the word, get everyone in the community onboard, find volunteers and experts, and fundraise all before I go back to America for ten days in August for my sister’s wedding. Doamne ferește- oh my God.

If you have been following my blog, or at least have read multiple posts, I’m sure you can tell that I really like it here. Life has a slow element that focuses on interpersonal connections, and even though I am still adjusting to the business peculiarities, it has forced me to understand not only my role within my community, but also my role as a human being. I love working with people on a grassroots level, and the constant challenge keeps me stimulated and motivated to continue to work throughout developing countries. I am starting to realize all the possibilities that Peace Corps is opening up for me, and for the first time in my life I have found a passion and a dedication that I didn’t know existed within me. A year ago if you would have told me that I would be thinking about dedicating my life towards international development within developing nations I probably would not have believe you. I had it all planned out that I would graduate from college, go into the Peace Corps for two years, go to law school, start a career, get married, start a family, then thirty-five, forty years later retire. Believe me, there is nothing wrong with that and I’m sure I could be perfectly happy with that lifestyle, but I think I will take a couple detours along the way now and see if I can’t see more of the world. Lately I’ve been thinking about the possibility of extending my Peace Corps service in Moldova, or going into an Environmental Conservation/AgriBusiness program to either The Gambia, Morocco, Tanzania, Mali, Malawi, Madagascar, the Phillipines, Vanuatu, Niger, Benin, Zambia, or Miconesia. It’s pretty cool that I get to basically pick and choose the country (if they will have me) after serving an initial two-year stint in Moldova. The front-runners would definitely have to be Morocoo, Zambia, The Gambia, and Vanuatu. I’ve got about seven or eight months to make my decision so if you, or anyone you know has served, worked, or been to any of those twelve countries PLEASE drop me an email at ncolli2@gmail.com. I am going to pick cherries and work in the gradina. O zi buna!

Last Bell

2010-05-31T08:43:00.000-07:00

Once again, another month has gone by in the blink of an eye. Eight days from now is the year anniversary from the date I waved goodbye to my family at the gate of the Baton Rouge airport and departed for my life abroad. I’ve said this countless times before on my blog, but in some ways it has flown by, and other times life here has dragged by like the last drop of cane syrup dripping out of the jar. Regardless, it is hard to believe that I am fifty percent of the way through. At times I feel frustrated because I would like to have more tangible results to show for my time here, but I understand that this is a process and I am pleased with the work I have been fortunate enough to take part in. I’m looking forward to this next year, and am anticipating great things. The most notable difference is that I have a lot better knowledge of how things get done here, not to mention I actually understand the majority of what people say to me now.

Today was Last Bell across Moldova, which commemorates the last day of school for the summer. All the kids were in their Sunday best, and the graduating classes all adorned pageant style sashes. For many of the teachers in PC, this means they went to school, listened to speeches, watched concerts, and even had to get up and say a word or two. I’m sure they are just as glad as the students that school is out for the summer. I didn’t get a chance to make the Last Bell ceremony at my village school, most notably because I didn’t know that it was going on until afterwards. I guess that’s what you get when you avoid the school like the plague. I truly admire the dedication and persistence that teachers have, because I know if I were an English or Health teacher here I would have dreaded everyday.

Works seems to be at an interesting place right now. One of my partners is going to America for the summer, and it just so happens this is the partner that is a really a shaker and a mover here, which will slightly stall most of our plans. We are trying to establish a Small Project Fund for local NGO’s through our District Council, and it would be really nice to have him here to have help with the writing of the project. If all goes to plan, this is my defining service project, and I am eager to see the social welfare benefits that could come from this. I know I’m not being very clear right now so let me explain. We have multiple NGOs, nongovernmental organizations, that are setup to serve the public and not for private interests that range in expertise from HIV/AIDS to business development. We are trying to setup a program where we would be the donors for project ideas they want to implement in the community. This will be a big job, with a big financial commitment, and hopefully I would be able to see it commence by the time I leave.

With the responsibility of living on my own, comes the responsibility of making myself food three times a day, from scratch. I know I’m not hungry now, but give me forty-five minutes and my stomach will be a rumblin’, so for now, la revedere and a happy Memorial Day to everyone.

Long Overdue

2010-05-18T11:26:00.001-07:00

Just posin'

Dave sliding down the side of the mountain towards the castle.

One of the mountain dogs at the mountain cabana.

At the mountain cabana

Popping into the backyard of Vlad the Impaler

Old city center in Brasov

Good morning ladies and gents. I seem to be falling into the pattern of posting less frequently now, and before you go jumping down my throat seeing that this is probably the most riveting non-fiction you’ve ever read in your life, there is a logical explanation for this. First of all, the strange and awkward feelings I felt coming into Moldova is all but gone. I’m coming up on the one-year mark soon, and with the passing of the time come the feelings of normalcy and complacency. Not to fret, this is a good thing; it shows that my ability to integrate and adapt is getting better. No longer do I stop to gawk at the ladies wearing cabbage leaves on their heads in the market, now I know that this simply is a sign that she has fresh produce (most likely cabbage) to unload. As of late, I have also been quite busy with a number of things: Moving places, hiking the Carpathian Mountains in Romania, and work.

I can’t make this a long entry because I’ve got to go teach a seminar in an hour, but I’ll give you the highlights. Two weeks ago I moved out of my host family’s apartment into a place of my own. It’s on the other side of town, and instead of a four minute walk to work it’s about twenty-five, but it’s not too bad. Already I’ve been bombarded with crazy neighbors, packs of visiting Peace Corps volunteers, and friends from the village. For the most part I love the place. It’s got an awesome patio where I like to put a table to have dinner, but with that outdoor exposure it opens myself up to endless (and most of them pointless) conversations with the crazies around here. One of the neighborhood drunks now has taken to introducing himself everyday, then asking if I have five lei (About 30 cents) every time we see each other. Other than that I love it- it’s a huge apartment, I have three bedrooms, a “music room” where my deep freezer and piano reside, and a kitchen. I find myself spending the majority of my time in the kitchen now. It’s not that I love to cook; I simply forgot how long it takes to make three meals by hand from scratch everyday. For a year now I’ve been absolutely spoiled and pampered, and it’s a weird transition into having to pre-think what you will be eating later on in the day. Already I have baked pre-smoked salmon and had the smoke detector PC gave me go off two times. I’m starting to think salads, rice, and beans are the only way to go.

I took a trip to Romania last week. My close friends in the ARBD program and I took to the mountainside and decided to bushwhack our way through the Transylvania region. I say bushwhack because we had the tendency to loosely follow the marked trail and spent an entire day wandering aimlessly on some quite steep and rugged terrain. I can’t describe the astounding beauty of the Carpathians in the spring. All the trees are bursting with bright green, the mountains still have snow on the peaks, and all the fields and meadows are carpeted with yellow and white wild flowers. While on the mountain we stayed in mountain cabanas, which was like a hostel halfway up the mountain. After several grueling hours hiking up the mountain you reach small cabins, which they call cabanas, where you can pay about 3 dollars for a bed and a meal. We spent the night relaxing with the locals that ran the place drinking beer and playing dominos while listening to the Romanian version of Bob Dylan. On the last day of hiking, the trail literally dropped us off in the backyard of Vlad the Impaler’s castle. For the next two days we lounged around the town of Brasov to lick our wounds and recover from the most strenuous backpacking any of us had ever done. Brasov was nice, and we had some great food there that wasn’t your typical cabbage and potatoes from Moldova, but on the whole I was highly unimpressed and found the town a tad bit boring. If you are into eating and drinking, then it’s a gold mine, but once you have been accustomed to seeing breath-taking views at every mountain top clearing, sitting in a veranda sipping a cappuccino pondering where to eat for lunch just doesn’t cut it for me.

For three weeks now, the ACSA consultant who lives in the small village where we are doing the water project and I have been trying to meet up. On Saturday I thought I was going with one of my partners to the village to simply hand off the money to him so that the final stage of the pipeline can commence. However, early Saturday morning the president of the raion (the equivalent of a Governor) picked me up and took me to the village for a press conference. After he and the mayor spoke for 30-45 minutes, I was once again put on the spot and demanded to give a speech. I am usually no stranger to public speaking, and I don’t have a problem with it, except when I have been completely and utterly caught off guard and have been daydreaming for the past 40 minutes. To a roomful of maybe fifty people I managed to stammer out ”Thank you for letting me be here today, it was an honor to work on this project” blah blah blah, and that’s the pretty version. I made so many Romanian errors that the people were kind enough to clap for me at the end. It reminded me of the Special Olympics. The floor was then opened up for the villagers to ask questions about the project. What amazed me was their hesitance to see this project come to fruition. You would think that after 400 years of a village not having running water and battling health problems due to unsanitary drinking water that everyone would be enthusiastic. However, the villagers were reluctant because this is now another burden for them to pay for something that used to be free. Not to mention the fact that most of their concerns were about the legitimacy of the controller that will collect the money. It just amazed me that these people, living the epitome of poor village life, are petrified that now they will have to start paying for water, and even then they are worried that the collector will be corrupt and will steal the money and will cheat them. I was reminded of the book One Hundred Years of Solitude, hands down one of my favorite books, and after doing community development work in a developing nation it means so much more to me.

Paka for now.

Moving up in the world

2010-04-30T09:07:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a quick blog update because it is an absolute pristine day and the rooster calls are beckoning me to join them outdoors. If any of you readers actually worry about my well-being here, then fret not. I’m pretty sure life doesn’t get much better than this.

Ever since the middle of winter I have been feeling great. Lately, I’ve been feeling more than great. I am experiencing my village and Moldova in new ways, and every time I think this as good as it gets, Moldova goes off and proves me wrong. Do you know that feeling of falling in love? Everything is new to you at first, your stomach is in knots, you walk around with a smile plastered on your face, and people tell you that you are acting exceptionally chipper? That’s me and my lady-love- Moldova. I don’t want to go overboard with this mushy nonsense, because just like a woman, she can really get me riled up and leave me sulking for several days. However, I haven’t had a bad DAY in a long time. Whenever something does go askew, I’ve found I’m quick to get wound up, but quick to cool down, and I can live with that.

I attribute my mood to many factors. First and foremost, the weather is absolutely beautiful. Today is 70 degrees (~22 C), everything is blooming from tulips to the cherry trees that line all the streets. I was talking to the “gardener” at the District Council today and we were talking about lawnmowers, which they most certainly do not have here. He asked if I could get him one, and I laughed and said we could talk about it later. It might make his job a lot easier, but if you could see the front of the building with purple and yellow wild flowers blooming everywhere, with nice beds of red and yellow tulips stretching towards the sun in every direction, it simply wouldn’t be the same with a nicely manicured bed of grass.

Secondly, my Romanian is really starting to kick in. I’m no where near where I want to be, but it’s like a light clicked the other day and I find myself having much more meaningful conversations without getting strange looks when I say certain things. The grammar in this language is completely foreign to English, and I have really come to appreciate its complexity, which you learn after awhile, it is logically consistent which has attributed to my “A-Ha!” moment. I was at my tutor’s house on Wednesday, and she told me me how much improvement I’ve made since beginning my lessons. Let me tell you, I walked out of there feeling like the king of the world. I got on a mini-bus to come back to my village and had a strange, but great conversation with a little old baba who was telling me all about her cow. I was having a peak Romanian moment, so I decided to bump around the village, and ultimately wound up getting a haircut. Sure enough the sky came falling down shortly after. The girl cutting my hair was absolutely drop dead gorgeous. It was one of those instances where I would have had trouble speaking in English, much less Romanian. I had gotten a haircut from her when I first moved to my village, and like a baby lamb I was timid, nervous, and barely said a word much less I screw up and look like a jackass. Well I know I’ve grown here in Moldova, because it now feels normal to blunder my way through conversations and hope people understand what I’m saying. When I sat down she said”So I hear you speak better now”. That’s all it took, I told myself that I had to make a showing for myself this time, and proceeded to try and make routine small-talk. What’s your name, where are you from, how long have you worked here, will you marry me, what do you do for fun, you know the usual. It was going pretty well, the dialogue was going back and forth, and then I started noticing subtleties of her splendor, and that’s what did me in. I simply couldn’t talk. It took me about five tries to spit out “Ce te gîndești?” what do you think, when she asked how short she should cut my hair. The straw that broke the camels back was when I asked her if she had a wife, instead of husband. The other people in the parlor were ease dropping and once I said that, everyone started laughing, including her. Oiff, doamne ferește. The worst part was that I didn’t get a response from that. Tail tucked in between my legs, I thanked her, paid, and went home.

The story doesn’t stop there, because I told my neighbor, a sweet little old grandma about this incident, and she told me not to worry about it and that she was going to fix it. With that she grabbed my hand, pulled me down the path to the center of town, and was determined that I ask her to take a walk with me in the park (the village equivalent of a date). I wouldn’t classify myself as a shy person, but asking a girl out with a little old lady moderating isn’t my style. Someone in the Big House must have felt bad for me, because ten feet from the door to the salon I ran into one of my partners. Never in my life have I been so happy to hear someone tell me that I need to come with them to finish work that was due that evening.

More big news, I am moving into my own place in an hour and a half! Four months of patiently waiting is finally paying off. I don’t know if I will have a dish, pot, or blanket to my name, but at least it will be a place to call my own. I told a couple PC friends that I was moving out this weekend, and automatically was told that they will be coming in to “lend me a hand”. I don’t know how much helping they will be doing since they are coming conveniently twenty-four hours after I move all my stuff, but I am looking forward to having friends come spend the weekend in my village. One of my PC friends coming is in the Russian language group, and it’s always interesting to see the locals reaction when you put them in the Romanian region of the country. I decided today that it wouldn’t be a party if we didn’t invite the locals, so I’ve got some of my Moldovan friends coming who really know the right things to say when you invite them to a party- “What kind of wine should I bring? You like them both right? No problem, I’ll bring both”.

Work is keeping me busy lately. Between seminars, village visits, and other projects, I have something going on everyday now. Lately, I have been working on a project that was introduced to me awhile back about composting. In the villages in Moldova, the majority of the people have animals, usually a cow, chickens, ducks, rabbits, pigs, and a dog. However, most people don’t use fertilizer or compost in their home gardens and in the fields. A Moldovan counterpart and I are trying to start a business where organic waste will be collected from the houses and brought to a demonstration plot to show the benefits of composting, and where fertilizer and compost can be sold at a reduced price. We are still in the beginning stages, but the project shows promise and I have grand plans to turn this into more than a demonstration plot, and will hopefully be able to get my hands on soil and water testing kits, and conduct on-going research in the area that will add to the educational component.

Fiți sanitoș! Paka paka.

"We live life forward, and understand it backwards"

2010-04-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

The rolling hills of Moldova.

Too funny not to laugh.

V.I. Lenin. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov! ...What's he talking about Dude?

I just re-read my blog post from last week, and yikes. I apologize for the incessant droning. Maybe I needed some brînza with that whine. The next day life pulled a 180 on me and everything that I was complaining about fixed itself. My program manager called me in the morning and told me he had (somehow) spoken to the landlord and was meeting us at noon to check the place out. We had a great meeting, the apartment was clean, it has a really nice garden that I’m looking to overhaul upon moving in, and we have a contract for me to move in May 1^st. Maybe the best thing I found out is that it is coming with a laundry machine! I was getting used to the fact that I would be hand washing from here on out, and that thought doesn’t really bother me, but I’m not going to turn down a laundry machine. Although now that I think about it, the last time- the one and only time- I actually used a Moldovan washing machine I ended up shrinking half my clothes to midget size since all the buttons were in Russian. I wonder what my villagers will say about me when I’m walking around in a tight, formerly-white-but-now-is-pink shirt and acid wash jeans.

I’ve been quite busy lately, although I haven’t sat in my office for more than two hours over the last week or two. It’s planting time and I’ve been kicking it with the farmers in the fields learning how to plant beans, corn, onions, potatoes, and peas, while empirically learning that strawberry plants are not weeds and you most definitely will get yelled at if you try to uproot them. This is some backbreaking work, and I sometimes feel like a wimp compared to 70 year old babas that work like horses in the fields. The most amazing part- they don’t drink water, just wine. Gee-zuhs, I can’t keep up with that pace. When I sweat all the water out of my pores I decided to get a couple pulls off of grandpa’s homemade cough syrup. Bad idea. I was hunched over, panting, trying to comprehend Romanian and plant potatoes before I imperatively had to take a pauza and find the nearest water well. Peace Corps Medical staff recommends that we don’t drink this water, but at that time I felt the trade-off of spending a couple extra minutes on the john outweighed the dehydrated dizziness I was experiencing.

For my desk job, I recently was informed that I will be taking over the newly created electronic newsletter that my village is mandated to put out since we won a Democracy grant from the US Embassy. I have only seen this newsletter one time, and what it looks like is a weekly run-down of any current events in the community, grants that are available, and any other tid-bits deemed worthy enough to be sent to a select few that actually have email (although I teach weekly seminars to change that). This is going to suck up some hours out of my week since I’ll be scouring websites in only Romanian and Russian, and then producing a three-page report, in business-friendly Romanian. Truthfully, I wasn’t initially excited about this, but have now come to realize that I potentially have the influence to suede people to look at certain material (grants and programs I’m interested in) and hopefully get community backing for my projects.

This past weekend I went up to the border of Ukraine and Moldova to celebrate the birthday of a good friend of mine and to catch up with other volunteers. The PCVs house we stayed at reminded me a lot of camping. The gas didn’t work and we barbequed outside, no running water so we drank/washed dishes from the well outside, the outhouse was overflowing and it was better to find your own spot than sit in the torture box, and we all smelled to high heavens after three days of debauchery and camp fires. At times the weekend was a little blurry from rachui- distilled liquor made from beets, and a lot of sun. Some of the more specific memories were walking through a beautiful valley full of sheep, goats, lambs, cows, calfs, horses, and ducks; eating a raw goose egg out of a feces covered egg with Moldovansș and my utter incomprehension of the dialect they speak up there. Since it is close to Ukraine they speak Horholește, a Russian/Ukrainian mixture. Throw in some deep country Moldovanește and it calls for one hell of a time trying to piece together conversations.

I can truly say that I’m having the time of my life right now. The longer I stay in this country the more I learn to appreciate and understand not only the Moldovan cultural, but also my own as well. I read in a book onetime (although I can’t remember which one, go figure) that the best way for you to know your own culture is to live in another. This couldn’t truer. Va mulțumesc Moldova!

You can't win them all

2010-04-14T07:07:00.001-07:00

I normally don’t like to blog while upset, but it’s been awhile since I’ve last updated and I need a few minutes to put my life in perspective aka vent. Things have been going fairly decent lately. Decent because we have been having some gorgeous weather, but other than that I feel like my life is falling apart.

Numero uno, I somehow can’t seem to shake a cold. I rarely get sick now, and when I get put out of commission for multiple days and miss events that I’ve been looking forward to for a while now, well, it sucks. On Sunday I went out in the countryside to kill some time, take in the scenery, and simply enjoy the outdoors. I was feeling okay enough, the weather was fantastic, and my hike somehow turned into an onion-planting fiesta with a couple locals. Pretty BA. I really enjoy getting out in the fields and getting my hands dirty, I just wish I could do it more often. The shitty part is that I woke up the next day- Memorial Easter where everyone goes to the cemetery to honor their deceased loved ones- feeling rotten and stayed at home all day. I don’t like missing national holidays, especially ones that are so different from our own.

The same day I missed out gettin’ down in the cemetery I found out the marathon I’ve been planning on running in October, the 2,500 anniversary race of the marathon IN ATHENS, is already booked up and I won’t be participating. UUUgggggghhhh. Frustrating. I was really looking forward to that. I know I could do another one around the same time, but all the ones I found are in Western Europe, and well, gross (kidding), no thank you. I’ll stick to Eastern Europe while I have the chance.

Lastly, I’ve been trying to move into another place for about four or five months now. I really wanted to move into a house, but my partners have deemed me incapable of making my own food, much less looking after a house. They told me they knew of a couple that would rent me an apartment. Great, that was easy enough. That was back in January. After waiting a month to simply see the place (it’s big and shitty, but I’ll only be there for a year so I really could care less what it looks like) they told me I could move in March 15^th. I gave notice to my host family, packed up my stuff, and was ready to move, except when time came, I found out I was going to be moving into the landlord’s apartment because there is someone living in the apartment. I wasn’t very keen on this idea, and would rather kick it with a family that I’ve gotten comfortable around for the last ten months instead of diving back into the “is it cool if I walk around in my drawers” stage with a new family. For the past month I’ve been hounding everyone when I can move in, and they finally gave me the date of April 15^th. The apartment would be clean, a family wouldn’t be living there, and all I had to do was get Peace Corps to come check it out before I call it home. The 15^th is tomorrow, and I’ve been trying to get in touch with the landlords all week (These damn holidays are really messing work/life up). My program manager is asking me when he should take the time out of his busy schedule to come to my village to see the place, and I can’t even get in contact with the people. I decided I needed to take a more direct approach and go to their home today to clear things up (not to mention the fact that I heard from my partner that they were going to go up on my rent before I even moved into the place). I got there in the late afternoon and no one was home. I decided maybe, just maybe, the lady was at the apartment cleaning it and getting it ready for me to move in. That was probably a mistake, because once I walked over there and I saw that the family is STILL LIVING THERE, I really flipped out. I don’t know if it’s because I’m foreign, the language barrier, the cultural difference, or what, but there is clearly a miscommunication going on and it is really wearing my patience down; And I consider myself to be a patient person after going through a year of Peace Corps. I decided to throw the towel in at that moment and busted out the big dogs- I called my program manager. In the heat of the moment I’m pretty sure I said verbatim “I’m really sick and tired of all this nonsense going on between everyone in my community and have no idea what to do anymore”. I guess I could have been a tad more composed while talking to my boss.

Life could definitely be worse, and tomorrow is a new day. The older groups are starting to leave and it was bittersweet to see some good friends leave. I am really proud to have known these people and have the utmost respect for them after seeing the great work they’ve done here and for sticking it out the whole two years. If you guys are reading this then I’d like to say thank you for being there for us; it was truly a pleasure getting to know you all, and good luck on your journeys. I need a piece of fruit and a nap now.

Paște

2010-04-03T06:48:00.001-07:00

Well, it’s official. Spring is here. Little green buds have been appearing on all the trees, flowers are starting to appear in the gardens, and the goats are back in the fields. I’m sitting on the third story of the Peace Corps’ balcony in Chisinau writing out this blog, and I’m about to let my hair down a little bit and take my shoes and my long sleever off. Weather this good always gets me in the mood to either go kayaking, throw a Frisbee, ride a bike, or go fishing. Sadly, I’m not able to do anything of those things right now- thank god for a vivid imagination and a good book though. It’s pretty quite here at Peace Corps, all the teachers are on Easter Break and are fleeing the country, and the rest of the volunteers are in their respective villages gearing up for Easter tomorrow. I should be in my village right now as well, except I haven’t been feeling very well these past few days and I’m trying to conveniently avoid the tradition of standing all night in an Orthodox church until six am when the festivities start.

By tradition, the Moldovans that are Eastern Orthodox (the majority) are following post right now. Post is roughly the equivalent of Catholic’s’ lent, except a tad bit more stringent. During this period I don’t think you are allowed to eat meat, diary, or animals products for the forty days (and really I think it’s 43 days since Lent starts on a Wednesday and Post starts that Monday), but I don’t think most people follow this tradition- at least my host family didn’t. However, for the past week we have completely cut out meat, butter, cheese, and eggs. I have been eating, and I kid you not, potatoes and beans three times a day. It’s pretty amusing at the dinner table now because my host sister detests beans, and she has been on a bread, jelly, and potato diet. Sounds delicious right? On Thursday night my host mom told me she was preparing my favorite dinner- baked potatoes and baked chicken- and it really got my hopes up. The last time she made this meal she forgot about the food and it was like gnawing on shoe leather, so the anticipation of a good meal was killing me. Once dinner was finally ready (around 10pm since she and my host sister have been going to the church every evening after work) I was sorely disappointed to find baked potatoes and, yes, once again, beans. For the record, I love beans, but it’s getting quite noxious in my room and a break from beans will be nice.

For the Easter holidays, like I’ve said, everyone goes to the church on Saturday night and stands for a ceremony lasting until the morning when food is spread out and the priest walks by dousing it with holy water. By tradition, this blessed food should be eaten over the next three days. Around six in the morning all the little trouble makers in the village go off and make a big bon fire. Somehow burning tires that are spun around to shoot flames in every direction are included in this celebration, but I’m going to have to see this to get the full story. Once the pyrotechnics have been distinguished, the feasting begins. All week long I’ve heard the bleating of dying lambs and pigs, so I’m assuming we will have our fair share of meat. It wouldn’t be a Moldovan holiday without mayonnaise salads and gallons upon gallons of house wine and cognac. I’m going to my partner’s house for this celebration, which is about 15 minutes down the road in another village, and I’m really hoping I make it back to my own bed tomorrow night. The odds aren’t in my favor.

Monday will be spent resting and recuperating, which hopefully means I will have the gumption to finish a follow-up report for the water grant that I just won this week. From all the other volunteers that have seen an Easter in Moldova, I won’t be working for the next two weeks, especially since the following Sunday is Paște bajinelor (Easter something or other). This is a lot like Dia de los muertos in the Latin culture, and every family goes to the cemetery to light candles and give gifts to their deceased relatives. They have permanent tables set up in the cemeteries here, and this is supposed to be an all day event. I have already made promises to visit to several families’ sites and taste their house wine and receive a gift (usually a towel, cup, or flowers). Allegedly my community got a previous volunteer pretty smashed at this event, and he wandered off and passed out in the park, and has forever been known as the “alcoholic American” that can’t hold his booze. The bar has been set.

One similarity between American Easter and Moldovan Easter is the presence of the Easter egg. Not surprisingly, eggs are an international symbol of springtime and the rebirth of the earth. However, Easter eggs in Moldova are traditionally painted red (although this tradition is fading) instead the plethora of pastel colors we use. I asked my tutor why this was and she smirked and told me this was reminiscence from the Soviet Union (she is quite anti-Communist). I don’t know if I buy that because someone else told me it is a symbol of the blood of Christ- a much more plausible answer- but who knows, if I see an Easter egg dyed red with the hammer and sickle painted on it, I’ll have my answer.

I’m going to go shower up, put on my game face, and power through these next couple of days. I just want you all to know that I am doing this in the name of Peace and Friendship, although my village-wide wrestling match is coming up soon and I plan on kicking ass and winning that ram. As for now, I hope everyone has a Paște fericit (happy Easter)! Peace.

Road trip

2010-03-28T10:06:00.000-07:00

Greetings oameni. It has been several weeks since an update- I’ve been burdened with the obligation of taking a vacation in Eastern Europe, and haven’t found the time to tap out a letter. My friend Aaron and I were able to take off a week of work to head up to Ukraine and Poland for one memorable, slightly spontaneous road trip.

To leave the country we went north to Balti and had dinner with a friend before we boarded a 9:30pm bus to the border of Moldova and Ukraine. Upon receiving our tickets and finding our seats (except Aaron’s seat number didn’t actually exist), we were pleased to find that we had the entire back row to ourselves, that is until two guys got on at the next stop and preceded to try and kick us out of the back seat by saying they were headed past L’viv (the final destination for the bus). In hindsight it would have been best to heed their wishes and give up the back row; while everyone else can somewhat recline their seats, the back row is stuck with no where to recline, and an even smaller space for your legs once the passengers in the seats in front of you find that magical recline button. Regardless, we hunkered down for what we thought was going to be a 19 to 20 hour bus ride and had provisions consisting of a bottle of house wine, a handful of granola bars, a $1.38 bottle of vodka, strawberry-banana juice, and two liters of water. Crossing the boarder wasn’t very difficult, mostly it was just sitting around waiting in a steaming hot bus for the border patrolmen to finish processing everyone’s passports. It got quite warm on the bus and I decided to stripe down to a wife beater and find the bathroom, except on the way there the Russian-speaking bus driver cut me off and mockingly told me “This isn’t the beach, put on a shirt.” It seems I have come full circle and it only feels like yesterday when I was getting asked by my first host family why I always have a shirt on when it’s hot outside.

To our surprise, the bus only took 13 hours and we arrived in L’viv a little before midday. I can’t tell you how nice of a city L’viv is. It’s a funky, ex-Soviet, gem of a place where it is hard not to find yourself aimlessly walking down the streets completely engrossed by all the Cyrillic signs, the incredible architecture, and the beautiful women.

To get to Poland, we took a bus to the border, walked across the border to save time instead of queuing up in the car line, and then took a train to Krakow. Krakow is another must see city that reminded me of an adult Disney World, Cinderella, and the movie In Bruge. The hostel we stayed at the first night threw a “First Day of Spring” party, and I was surprised to see a large bottle of Tabasco sauce sitting on the kitchen table. I soon found out that this was one of the main ingredients for a shot called Mad Dog (raspberry liqueur, vodka, and a dash of Tabasco) that resembled the Polish flag. We found this shot in every bar/disco we went to, and it’s funny to think that this fiery, Louisiana liquid gold has found it’s way into a national alcoholic beverage for Poland.

While in Poland I was able to meet up with a friend from back home. This is the second time since leaving for Peace Corps that I’ve seen someone from back home and in a way it’s weird to have them sitting in front of you in an environment that isn’t your hometown. Before heading back to Ukraine we went to Auschwitz and took a tour of the compound. On the bus ride I was trying to mentally prepare myself, but once you get there the emotional floodgates open and there is no turning back. There are no words to describe the feelings while walking through Auschwitz. I am more than ever still in shock of the hatred, the disgusting practices, and cruelty of humanity to carry out this horrific display of genocide. It was one of the most powerful places I have ever been, and the scenes will be with me for the rest of my life.

The remainder of the trip was pretty wild. From hanging out with locals, Eastern European discotechs, kebab stands, missing buses, semi-automatic gun ranges, castles, meeting loads of fellow traveler’s to running off an average of three to four hours of sleep a night, it was well worth the 13 hours on a bus. On returning we missed our bus because of a communication error in Russian (thanks Aaron…) and were a day late coming back. I had to present a grant at 12:30 in the afternoon the day we got back and I somehow miraculously made it clean-shaven and freshly clothed at 12:15 to meet my partner and present the proposal, not something that I would have liked to have done after three sleepless days and a 14 hour bus ride, but it went well and I find out Wednesday if the water project will be funded. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I’ve got to get my life in order and get ready for a busy week at work saving the world.

Peace.

The Opera House in L'viv, Ukraine.

Car loaded down with potatoes and onions for sale at the Ukraine/Poland border.

Sweet old Polish lady slightly disturbed by the fact that I was taking a picture of my friend passed out on the train.

Good Bye Lenin hostel in Krakow, Poland.

Krakow.

Auschwitz.

Auschwitz. "Labor sets you free"

Krakow church in the main square.

Beautiful church in Krakow.

Pretty cool that the cops have Prisus' for cars in Krakow.

One foot in Ukraine. One foot in Poland.

Villagers near the border in Ukraine.

Nice facade in L'viv.

Monument in the main square of L'viv.

A blind man walked into the fish market, right

2010-03-15T09:59:00.000-07:00

Noroc readers. Salutations are in order to everyone that has somehow stumbled upon this blog, either purposefully or unintentionally. If you’ve been an avid reader thus far, I’m impressed at your tenacity to read all of my mindless journeys through the second world. If this is you’re first time, I guarantee you there is better things to do with your time, but I hope you go to the beginning and check out the linear story of how I ended up here.

This past week has been a whirlwind of highs and lows- not so much emotionally, but rather successful meetings, encounters, and adventures contrasted with broken appointments, frustrations, misunderstandings, and waiting hours on end for people to show up. The good news is that our sanitary water project proposal was sent in last Friday, and it marks the completion of writing my first grant. We have to wait until March 27^th to hear if we won the grant or not, but I’ve got hope. Second, work has really been picking up. I have a meeting in another small village outside of town that wants to do a compost/fertilizer demonstration plot. The details I’ve been given so far are quite vague, but I’m finally starting to see projects in agriculture come my way. I hope that we can transform this demonstration plot into a teaching aide for farmers, kids, and anyone else interested to show the benefits of compost and natural fertilizers. There is a mentality not only here, but also worldwide, that the latest and greatest industrial pesticides and fertilizers are needed for successful farming. Often you’ll hear farmers here complaining that inputs are too expensive, but they’ve never considered the alternative to these often times harmful substances. Not only that, but soil erosion is a major problem in Moldova, and my theory is if certain agriculture practices such as clear cropping and plowing are revised to keep some of the left-over plant waste in the fields for mulch, this could help combat the erosion problem and add necessary nutrients back into the soil without having to purchase additional inputs.

I had lunch at the orphanage yesterday. The family we are working with is a family that out of the kindness of their hearts has adopted ten children. Due to insufficient heating, new gas lines will be hooked up to the house and new heaters added. Instead of having to raise funds by hitting all of you up for donations, an organization has agreed to finance the full amount of the project (minus 25% beneficiary contribution) and work should begin soon. A new project has also presented itself and it is one that I am passionate about seeing through. Next to the elementary school there is a local kitchen/day care center for impoverished children. This center hosts an after school program where kids can come to eat a hot meal, have a place to do their homework, play with their peers, and have structured daily activities. Currently they are cooking with propane canisters, but don’t have the money to get a gas connection to the main gas line, which would be cheaper, and more reliable since the gas canisters run out and it can be problematic at getting refills. The total cost of the project is only $300 USD, but we first need to get state approval for this gas line since it is non-profit center. It’s not a big project, but it will be rewarding.

Lastly, I STILL haven’t seen the apartment that I am supposed to move into. There is somehow a complete meltdown of coordination between the carpenters finishing work on it, the landlord, my partners, and myself. Allegedly, the days that I am busy and have prior engagements are the times that the landlord calls saying that I should come stop by to check it out. I have my doubts on the accuracy of these reports though…

This afternoon I am leading a seminar for local NGO and community leaders about technology and new forms of communication. The last part of the seminar will be an interactive workshop helping the people setup email account, and teaching them how to use the accounts. The district is trying to make the switch over to digital, and it’s pretty cool to be able to help in the very early stages. Thanks are due to my almost computer illiterate mother for helping me hone the skills useful in teaching the basics of technology.

I hope you enjoy the pictures. I’m off to lunch. La revedere!

Waiting on the trolley

The communist mayor's office in Balti.

Gotta love Soviet tanks in the middle of the town.

You're guess is as good as mine.

Selling flowers for International Women's Day

Fish market.

Hello Ladies.

Egg sellers

Pickled carrots, my favorite.

Olive seller.

At the piața

This is a picture in the village where we are doing our clean water project. These are really teenagers waiting for second period.

Entrance of the village where the water is going.

Kids summer camp and the Grounds Keeper.

One of my agriculture consultants standing at the site where the water towers will be.

Selling cakes out of the back of a van.

Shakin' hands, kissin' babies, and kickin' ass

2010-03-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

Remember what I said about the weather turning and spring on its way? Yeah well, I lied. Several days ago winter showed it’s evil face again, and dumped a foot of snow on the ground, and temperatures have remained below freezing delaying the inevitable mud, and thus spring. This has been the longest winter of my life, and it just so happens that this is an unseasonably brutal winter by Moldovan standards as well. Schools in the country had Spring Break last week, and I could never have imagined spending my spring breaks in a long-john body suit eating pickled watermelon when I was still in school.

As to not completely ruin my mood, I’m going to switch topics from the weather (Be warned to the reader that commented two posts ago, if you say “I told you that winter wasn’t done yet”, I’m going to f-ing loose it). Village life has been good to me lately. Everyday it feels like there really isn’t much going on, but when I take a step back and see what all I’ve got my fingers in, it seems that there is plenty of good work going on. I’ve been slowly, but surely pulled away from the agriculture field, which is bittersweet. I really wanted, and still do want to work primarily with agriculture, but the wants and needs of the community are pulling me more in a business direction; this is probably a good thing considering I don’t know the first thing about farming.

My water project to bring potable water into a village of 150 households, a kinder garden, and a kids summer camp is coming along nicely. After waiting nearly two weeks for the last remaining budgetary details, I received them today and we will be finishing the grant proposal tomorrow. This process has been slow, tiring, and frustrating….but totally worth it. The other day when someone came into our office to go over another project proposal, I heard my partners arguing over the specifics of a grant, and I heard Doamna Larissa, the lady I brought with me to the three-day grant writing seminar awhile back, say “No, we have to include a clear plan for sustainability and need to include specific details for monitoring and evaluating.” This didn’t sit too well with my other partner, her boss, until she said this was something we learned at the Peace Corps seminar, and that settled it. That was the first moment I’ve had in nine months in country that really showed the first signs of me having an effective role in my community. I couldn’t have been more proud of her.

I have also started working with the Raion Council, which is the head governing body of our district. We just won a grant from the US Embassy that will help setup a program to make a database of all the NGO’s (non-governmental organizations that are non-profits that serve to better the community) in our district, facilitate communication and transparency between the government and the NGO’s, and create a website that will allow for easier NGO registration which will help eliminate corruption. With this citizens will also have a resource point to see if there is an organization already established in the areas they maybe looking to improve within their own community. For example, with my organization, a lot of farmers and people with great business ideas simply don’t know that our organization exists and never are able to get adequate help if desired.

Tomorrow I have a meeting at the orphanage in my village. The organization FRUA has agreed to finance half of the heating project that is desperately needed in the two houses, and the work should be able to commence soon. I only wish this could have been done early last year before this brutal winter got here, but better late than never. I have a special blog post to devote to this orphanage, so stay tuned for that later.

Besides from work, time keeps clicking by. Yesterday was International Women’s Day, and man you wouldn’t believe what a big deal it is here. It’s like Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day combined, and on steroids. The schools were closed, as well as all the businesses and stores in the country. I don’t think I saw one woman without flowers, candy, or a stuffed animal in hand once yesterday. I was on a rutiera headed home when we stopped in some tiny village to pick up a guy standing on the side of the road with a four foot stuffed tiger in tot. It took him about ten minutes to squeeze the oversized stuffed animal onboard, down a cramped isle, and of course, deposit it in the seat next to mine. I was exhausted from a really busy weekend with mentor training and then running around a large Russian-speaking city, and after watching this debacle with the stuffed tiger, I proceeded to use it as a pillow and pass out on it. About an hour later, right when I was really catching some good Z’s, I got a nice case of whiplash when my pillow was jerked out from under my head.

Today I was supposed to checkout my new apartment that I’m slated to move into in eleven days, but once again, the guy bailed on me. Peace Corps still has to approve it, and they can’t do that unless I actually see the place first. I’m headed to Ukraine and Poland in two weeks and would really like to be out before then. So now that I’ve caught you all up to speed, more or less, on what has been going on over here in the ‘dova, I’m going to head out for what is hopefully one of the last snow runs for a long time. Once my Internet starts going fast again (the 12^th of every month…long story) I have a ton of great pictures to post. La revedere!

Back to the Future

2010-02-25T09:05:00.000-08:00

Today I was hitchhiking back home from a lesson with my new Romanian tutor when I was starting to really curse myself for not zipping my rain hoody on my jacket before I left. It wasn’t pouring down rain, but you wouldn’t classify it as a drizzle either. All of sudden, I hear the squeal of tires spinning on wet asphalt to my left. Like a flashback from 1985, a beat up, grayish Dalorean-looking car comes barreling around the corner, peels to a halt in front of me, and backfires. As I walked up to the car, I could hear some serious techno beats radiating from the inside, and although pensive about taking another death defying ride in this country, the rain persuaded me otherwise. I open the door, and first see a flashing, multicolored, electronic strobe light mounted on the dashboard, and then a pair of acid wash jeans. I was fully expecting to see Michael J. Fox asking me what year I wanted to travel to- “2010 please, this is too weird”. Instead I see a kid, barely 18, with black-out sunglasses, a black leather jacket lined with rabbit fur on the collar, acid wash jeans, a lit cigarette loosely hanging from his mouth, and the most glorious mullet I’ve ever seen in my life- straight business in the front, total party in the back. Classic.

I asked Marty if he was going to my village, and he replies, “yeah, lets go”. Before I even got a chance to shut the door, the tires started searching for traction on the wet ground. After barreling out the gate, we hit 80 mph (I’m guessing, my mental kph is off) when the driver switched movies, and we were then the cast of Tokyo Drift coming up to a 60-degree turn with a bus coming at us. If I were a religious man, I would have been doing some Hail Mary’s at this point, but instead I held tight and braced myself for death. Well, I’m here writing this, or at least I think I’m here writing this, so you can guess that we made it out alive. Barely. We made some serious mud ruts on the shoulder of the road coming out of the skid. I told the kid I wanted to live, and that maybe we should slow down. I’m pretty sure he even realized that was too close of a call, and he heeded my advice, some. Wanting to make chit-chat so I could get my mind off the looming possibility of death, I realized that it was raining, a little after dusk, and this dude had black-out sunglasses on. I made the mistake of asking how it was driving with the glasses- “I can’t see a damn thing, but don’t worry I know this road really well” was his response. I guess he didn’t know the road as good as he thought, because as we were approaching the margin of my village, he hit the biggest pothole in the road, the one everyone knows to avoid. You know how you always cringe when you accidently hit a pothole in your car and you always feel bad for your tires? Well imagine SLAMMING into a Moldovan sized pothole. I’m glad I wasn’t driving because I would have felt like a total jackass, as I'm sure he did, especially when we both realized that the front right tire had blown. I was pretty impressed with the string of Russian cuss words that he managed to work into one sentence at that point.

Not to let you down, but the ending is unfortunately anticlimactic. While cursing and pacing around the car, he spit on the hood, turned on his heal and marched off leaving me standing there in the rain wondering what the words for “spare tire” and “jack” were. No discussion, no goodbyes, he just took off.

Thanks for the lift man. Tell the Doc I say hello.

Niște fotografii pentru voi

2010-02-19T01:43:00.000-08:00

My camera has been in hibernation since my vacation a couple months ago, so I figured I would post some pictures of the pre-spring thaw that we've been having here lately. The snow is melting, and the mud is deeping, but thank goodness spring is coming! Poftim:

Water well outside my apartment.

These are the shacks where the people that live in the apartments keep their firewood, chickens, corn, etc.

I hadn't seen this debris on the side of the path for months now because of the snow. Whenever construction was being done on an apartment, they just dumped all the garbage here.

The girl in the background of this photo kept looking back at me wondering why I was stalking her taking pictures. My bad, you were in my shot.

Getting ready for planting season.

I can't tell you how many times I fell down this icy shoot during the winter. I saw one of the village drunks baby stepping down it a couple days ago, 15 minutes when I came by again he was still there teetering down.

Not so good of a road. Try running down it, not fun.

Typical Moldovan country house

Old Moldovan house behind my apartment.

Good road in town.

In queue next to the Post Office where you pay all your bills.

Old store close to the center of the village.

Wagon hitchin' spot.

"The Bread Van" that sells fresh baked break in the same spot practically everyday.

We can finally dry our clothes outside without them freezing solid!

Another wonderful view of the village from the back of my apartment.

Small house and barn close to where I live.

Nice shot of the hills.

Once again, the famous shot from my bedroom window. No more snow!

Laissez les Bon Temps Rouler

2010-02-16T03:37:00.000-08:00

I’m sitting here on this beautiful Fat Tuesday listening to a little Bad Company, cookin’ some kidney beans for lunch, and have a budding feeling that this is exactly where I want, and need to be. As each day passes, I can sense Spring knocking on Winter’s door. This weekend we had a major thaw, and the thick, white blanket covering the countryside now has large, black, earthen patches, and the small, frozen streams now are bulging with melt water and floating ice chunks. On Sunday, we had the best weather in months, and I sat on the third story balcony of Peace Corps’ headquarters reading a book while soaking up the sun on the 50-degree, immaculately blue, bluebird day. It’s truly amazing what six hours of sunshine, a good book, rich coffee, and intermittent, entertaining company does for the soul.

I guess it has been awhile since I last posted, because I see on the last entry that the Saints hadn’t won the Super Bowl yet. It only took 44 years, but I want to congratulate the Saints, New Orleans, and the rest of my fair state for the big victory. I have really enjoyed hearing about the celebration in the French Quarter, and wish that I could have been down there with friends doing it up right. Needless to say though, I had a great time representing from this side of the pond, and was once again reminded how small the world can seem. I went with a group of friend to the Marine’s house who guard the US Embassy to watch the game. Kickoff wasn’t until 1:30 in the morning, and we had been killing time before hand by preemptively celebrating for whichever team was to win. When we got there, I met a Fulbright scholar that lives in New Orleans, and his girlfriend Bailey Edwards, who graduated from Louisiana Sate University at the same time as me. What makes things even more bizarre is that we have a couple friends in common, and she is from a small town in Louisiana called Abbeville, where it happens I worked for a summer and ate everyday at the diner Dupuy’s (Good food and great looking ladies) where she worked. I don’t know what the odds of meeting her in this tiny, underdeveloped country tucked away in Eastern Europe are, but I am guessing that they are quite slim.

Life in the village is going well. My partners and I are rocking and rolling on our water project grant. We got off to a rocky start, and it was quite difficult for me to get a straight answer, but we have come a long way, and we are seeing the first glimpses of the light at the end of the tunnel. When we finish I am planning on throwing a big masa for everyone involved, and try to show my appreciation for putting up with me nagging, hounding, and pestering them everyday trying to get the details clear and consistent, and in a way I could understand due to my level of Romanian. Hopefully by that time I will have moved out, and gotten a place of my own. My dreams of living in a cottage, with a big garden, and a couple chickens are quickly becoming derailed. People seem to think that it would be easiest if I live in an apartment, and even then my partner is worried that I will wither away from malnutrition. Everyday she confronts me about this decision, and I can tell she doesn’t buy the fact that I know how to cook, and I’ve been feeding myself for quite some time now back home in America. I’m pretty sure if she knew English, and had my mother’s phone number, she would call and fact-check me. Lately, she has started up again nagging me to find a woman to take care of me- cooking, cleaning, and whatnot. This is truly one of the more awkward conversations to have when you haven’t quite mastered the language; I’m almost positive that she peppers the conversation with sexual innuendos that would make it all the more awkward if I did understand everything she was saying. Anyways, I’m going tomorrow to check out an apartment near the center that I will probably be able to move into, if everything checks out, mid-March or early April. I’m content with this decision, and as much as I want to live in a remote village with the people, it will be nice to be close to work, the market, the bus station, and my gym. Speaking of the gym, yesterday I was summoned to the trainer’s house instead of working out, to learn wrestling techniques so I can participate in the village-wide wrestling match this spring. Winner gets a ram. I’ll keep you updated on that…

The M22’s are getting ready to depart in less than two months, and my group, the M24’s, are gearing up to integrate the new trainees arriving in country in June. The group coming in this year is the biggest one yet, and there will be 75 people coming in to start the rigorous two to three month training. I found out yesterday that I was selected with three other colleagues in ARBD as mentors to represent our program and to help the soon-to-be PCVs integrate into our surreal world. I’m looking forward to this opportunity, and even though I don’t feel like a veteran, yet, it will be nice to have fresh faces around. I’m off to eat my beans. Happy Mardi Gras to everyone, and good luck with the fast for all that is participating (Started here on Monday for those of the Eastern Orthodox faith). Noroc.

Groundhog's day- six more weeks of winter, 500 more days of Moldova

2010-02-04T02:42:00.000-08:00

I’m slipping off my game. It’s been almost two weeks since I’ve written a blog post, and I know how eager all of you are to read about the wondrous life of Neal Collins (I’m trying to get my name out there for Google hits, also please note the sarcasm for, well, everything). Quite frankly I’ve been a man on the go. Last week my fellow Agriculture and Business volunteers had a conference with our partners in the capital for three days. Our partners came with us, and it was Peace Corps’ intention to school us on the latest and greatest techniques for grant writing and project proposals. My lady partner and I (that sounds odd doesn’t it?) gained a lot from our experience together, and we were quasi successful in revamping some project ideas and learning how to become a more effective dynamic duo; too bad my main partner didn’t come because we could have made quite the ménage.

I was somewhat skeptical how the conference was going to shape up when it began, because my partner was a little upset with yours truly from the get-go. To my defense, we had a slight miscommunication problem, which led to her standing on the side of the road for over an hour in 0°F weather. Before you jump to conclusions about how I’m going to hell in a hand basket for letting this poor old lady stand out there for so long, let me explain. We had agreed that I would buy two bus tickets in my village when I went to the bus station and got on the bus in the morning. She lives about fifteen minutes down the road and anyone that wants to get on there must stand on the side of the road and wait for the bus, or car, to pick them up. I told the driver that I had another passenger getting on at her village, and he agreed to stop once we got there and pick her up. Let me mention now that my cell phone had literally a tenth of a penny left of money on it, and I wasn’t able to place any phone calls. We pulled over at her village, a couple people get on, but no Doamna Larissa. “Oh shit this is going to get complicated” was all I could think at the time. Fifteen minutes later after trying to use two peoples’ phones next to me, who also didn’t have money on their cell phones, she called me and asked where I was. I explained that I was on the bus, but that it had already left. Communication error number one- while she thought I meant my village, I thought it was clear that we had already left her village meaning that she needed to get on another bus. An hour down the road she calls me again asking, yelling would be a better verb, where I’m at and why hasn’t the Telenesti bus come by yet. Once again I explain to her that the bus had left a long time ago and I was almost to the capital. The high pitch shrill and goads of God-knows-what language that followed was enough to turn the heads of everyone on the bus in my direction before she hung up on me mid-shriek. Clearly, communication error number two.

At this point I was torn between trying to get off the bus as soon as possible, buy a phone card to recharge so I could call her back, or to wait it out, get to Peace Corps, and let my Program Manager defuse the situation. I chose the latter, not that it mattered much because five minutes later she called back screaming at me. I honestly didn’t catch one word she said, and so as not to waste her money (and breath), and my embarrassment from having gained the unwanted attention of everyone on the bus, I hung up on her. I know this sounds bad, but I swear this isn’t as frowned upon as it is elsewhere in the world. Come to think of it, I rarely have a phone conversation without someone hanging up on me here- they say what they want and get off the phone.

Once I got to Peace Corps I got help from my Program Manager and he called her and helped explain the full extent of my story. That seemed to help calm her down a little, and for the first couple hours in the conference I could tell she was quite agitated. After three days of being forced to sit together and work on our water project we both left in good spirits and everything is back to normal.

I’m back in my village now. Each day blends into the next and if it weren’t for my calendar I would seriously think I was stuck in the movie Groundhog’s Day. There is a subtle, but noticeable change with the length of the days, and instead of getting dark at 4pm like it has been throughout the winter, the sunlight lasts until 5:30. I can’t wait for spring. Warm weather is simply part of who I am. Winter here isn’t bad though, sure it’s cold, there’s ice and snow everywhere and it takes about 20x longer to do anything than in the summer, but the icebreaker for me is the melancholy of the season. I’m not depressed and I feel healthy, but the pep is out of my step. The passing of the time is strange- one week I feel there is a ton going on, lots of good work to do, and then the next it’s like getting slammed into a brick wall. Nothing, nada, zip, time to just hold on, hunker down, and grind out the hours. I went back and read my blog entries that I’ve posted since moving to my village and noticed that every single project idea that I’ve written about has gone nowhere. This is the painstaking part of this job- no progress. I know what we do here has more to do with grass root connections, but you would think on the professional aspect something would have materialized by now. I started to divulge deeper into this, but for your sake, and more for mine, I deleted it.

It’s almost time for dinner now. We eat late at my house, usually around 9:30, entirely too late in my opinion. Dinner is the same day-in, day-out as well. I get called into the kitchen, it’s either going to be mashed potatoes, macaroni, or soup. My host sister complains that she was given too much food and that she is going to be fat. Then we talk about my day. Usually my host sister chimes in claiming that she doesn’t like the egg yoke, or the carrots, or whatever it else it might be that night that serves as an interruption. She then is scolded for not eating, and she tries to sneak the food onto my host mother’s plate. Scolded again. By this point my host mother remembers we need wine and asks us rhetorically if we want a glass. I say yes, my host sister says no. It’s not like it matters much because we get a large shot glass anyways and are told to drink up. My host mother’s cell phone rings constantly and usually she runs off after the shot of wine to answer it, leaving Corina and myself at the table. After one or two failed attempts to get a conversation going (Last night it was me asking if there was any other way to say “yes” or in Romanian “da”, because I got to thinking that in English there is “yes”, “yeah”, “uh-huh”, “yup”, etc, but all I got back from Corina was a blank stare) I give up, finish up the last of my dinner, wash down the rest of the wine, and go back to whatever it was I was doing. In this case, I’ll be back in twenty to finish this blog.

Tonight it was mashed potatoes and a fried egg, and everything else played out just as I detailed above. Tomorrow it will be the same, but at least it’s one step closer to the weekend. I’m headed back into Chisinau this weekend, although probably just for Sunday night. Time to watch the Super Bowl. I don’t know if I would make an hour and a half trip into the capital on a work night to go to the marine’s mansion and watch a football game that starts at 2 or 3 in the morning, but this year calls for special circumstances. Hell has frozen over and the Saints are going to the Super Bowl! The first year I ever move out of my beloved homeland and the Saints get called up to the bigs. What a funny world we live in.

As always, thanks for reading and GUEAX SAINTS!

Running through a soviet winter

2010-01-21T10:00:00.001-08:00

I’m a four o’clock type of runner. I can’t find the energy to get up in the morning, strap on my shoes before breakfast, and hit the trails. My brain needs caffeine and my stomach needs food. By four o’clock in the afternoon I’ve had a chance digest lunch, I’ve put in a full day at work, and I’m ready to turn up the music and let my mind loose.

Today is shaping up to be a good day to run- it’s not snowing anymore, no wind, and the temperature isn’t too cold, about 14° F (-10 C). I’ve been meaning to take my camera with me running since I got to my village half a year ago, because usually it is quite a scenic run, except in the winter. I layer up, first the long johns, top and bottom, the sweats, a jacket, gloves, and a cap. Thanks to some very lovely ladies I adorn a pair of waterproof socks that were a going away present before coming here, and let me tell you, they make a world of difference. My earplugs for my iPod are pretty shotty, for some reason Apple makes great electronics except when it comes to earphones. The buds are falling apart, but with a beanie to secure them in place it works just fine for me. As you can see below, I rock the YakTraks when I run, if not I would be slipping and sliding all over the place.

I debate what to listen to today, I usually go for a premade playlist, but I listened to the “Pool-Time” playlist on my last run and there is just something too bizarre about running through a nearly white-out snowstorm jamming Bob Marley, Slightly Stoopid, and Sublime. I decide to go with an Australian hip-hop group called Hilltop Hoods (Play this link to make your blog reading experience closer to mine, although make sure to click on Open in New Window or Sigh-O-Nara). On the way out of my apartment building I run into a neighbor and give him a “Buna ziua Domnul”, which he replies back to, but the music muffles his response which makes it sound like a foreign language, err, yeah. The road that leads out to the pasture lands has four other Soviet style apartment buildings that look identical to mine on the left, and several small houses on the right. A group of teenagers spot me, and start to laugh at the ludicrousness of me running in these conditions. Seven months ago I might have been more self conscious, but I’ve found that teenagers will probably laugh or smirk at you no matter what you are doing so I keep on keeping on (We tend to put too much emphasis on nationalities, teenagers are the same on every continent). Plus, we’ve all been there, their capricious lifestyle wacked out from hormones makes the joke really on them. I make it to the end of the road, and zip straight across to head out into the fields, only now they are large bowls of snow and ice. There is a small, mounded road that I take that leads off into the hills and eventually will lead you to another village about 40 kilometers away. I try to stay on the far right or left of the road where the ground is built up and there is less snow. There is more traction to run on, but it feels like running on a balance beam because if you miss the seven inch stripe, you are either going to roll your ankle, or fall into about four feet of snow, or both. Other times I’ll simply plot a course in the middle of the road and plow right through the foot and a halfish of white powder. It calls for harder running, much more like running on sand except there is uneven, frozen mud clumps that lurk underneath the blanket of snow, but it’s enjoyable to high-knee it through that much snow and really burn some energy.

My thoughts are mostly scattered, as they should be when one runs. I just got off the phone with a friend from home, and my mind keeps wandering back to our conversation, about how my day is winding down while hers is just starting, and then I suddenly become aware of the song lyrics that are playing. The music is on quite loud to distract me from the cold. I’m only ten minutes into the run and the chill is still stinging slightly, but the music surprisingly helps.

It seems strange to me that it is now winter, when only a few short months ago I was running along this same path in shorts and no shirt. I start to wonder what the weather is like in Haiti, and how the country is fairing in the earthquake’s aftermath. A large part of me wants to be there to lend a helping hand, and after experiencing Hurricane Katrina first hand, it seems that a young, able-bodied volunteer would go along way. I understand that there is a large, probably almost unmanageable amount of human aide flowing into that country, and I am awestruck at people’s selflessness and humility at times. These highly trained professionals are going into the heart of God’s warzone, and I can only imagine that they are doing it because they know that they have the capability, the qualification, the and the mindset that it is our moral responsibility as a human race to help others when we can.

Life in a dysfunctional, new-to-the-ball-game capitalist economy has made me see more clearly the benefits and disadvantages that prevail in our free market society. I’m not bashing on bettering oneself financially or corporate gains, but I think we all tend to miss the bus on occasion by not giving back to our communities. Do some pro-bono work every now and then, volunteer at a local soup kitchen or animal care shelter, pick up a piece of trash you see on the side of the road at least (or donate funds to Peace Corps projects J); I guarantee you will feel better about yourself by giving back. I don’t want to sound too preachy here, because lord knows I am far from figuring out all the answers, but I do know the satisfaction gained from a selfless act. It may have taken me most of my life to figure that out, but better late than never right? Not to bring up teenagers again (can you tell that I live with one?), but I was on Facebook the other day and a friend of mine put up a “Text this number and donate funds for Haiti”, and her teenage younger brother responded, “Yeah, if your gay”. You see what I mean about missing the bus…

Song change. Back to reality. I make it to my halfway bridge about 25 minutes into the run. I’m feeling good at this point, my blood is circulating, my muscles are relaxed, and there is a nice trail of frozen snot plastered to my upper lip. When it’s this cold, there is no way my nose won’t not run, so I’ve learned to just let it freeze or else I’ll constantly have to wipe it off on my jacket or my gloves. I haven’t made it very far distance wise, when there isn’t any snow I can make it to this bridge in thirteen minutes, but since I’m simply shooting for a slow and steady timed run, I turn back. I’ve been trucking up the middle of the road for ten minutes now and turning around is welcomed. This time I make sure to run on the far right hand side and pick up some speed while I can run on quasi hard surface. I feel as if I’m in the Norwegian army doing basic training. I’m not sure if this is a very accurate thought though and will have to verify it with a friend of mine that was actually in their army, but it can’t be too far off.

Work related thoughts start to permeate into my mind. This morning was a slight disaster, or “brush fire” as my father likes to call it. I live in the raion center (a raion functions much like a county or parish) and my office oversees ten consultants throughout the region. Most of our projects occur in smaller villages than where I actually live, and I expect to be doing a fair amount of intra-raion traveling this spring. I’m in charge of spearheading a trash project in the village of Chiștilniță, or so I thought it was a trash project. I was handed a project proposal, in English, that my partners said I need to revise and turn it into a grant proposal. After reading the thing I find out that no, it’s not a garbage project at all, but instead it vaguely describes a composting demonstration plot. When I mean vague, it was close to incomprehensible. Calling around and asking the consultant there provided no luck as to the answers I need to go further with this project, and my first real project seems to be at a complete standstill until I can find someone to tell me what the actual goal is here. There is a lot riding on this one for me, and it would be nice to show my partners, my community, my colleagues, and you, that I’m capable of doing something on my own. O să vedem- we shall see.

Woooooaaahhh! My trapeze act comes to an abrupt halt while I fall face first into the snow while awkwardly twisting my knee in the process. I spy a dead, frozen dog ten meters from me that makes me think we came close to having similar fates. It doesn’t really matter that I’ve got on waterproof socks now, because I’m covered head to toe in snow with a fair amount in all the crevices where my bare flesh meets the cold with a cringe. I dust myself off, my knee still throb’s, but its bearable. It’s probably not the best idea to get up and run right now so I am going to do what my high school gym teacher, Coach Broussard, would always tell us, walk it out. Slowly the pain dulls, but doesn’t quite go away. Good enough for me, it’s too damn cold to walk all the way back anyways. I make it back without anymore original thoughts or spills. Mostly I think about what I want to do this weekend- read my book while sipping instant coffee next to the fire with intermittent Romanian study breaks sounds quite intriguing. I checked Weather Underground earlier today and it said that temperatures this weekend should hover around -13° F (-25 C), a perfectly good excuse to be worthless and not leave the house (You see now why I think today’s weather is nice?).

My concerned face after I fell, not to flip the camera off or anything.

I feel better now that I’ve ran; not that I felt bad going into it, I just am a lot calmer than I was before. Yes it might be out of the ordinary to do this three times a week, but there is that marathon goal looming over my head, and I feel like a badass coming from Louisiana and running through a “Soviet” winter. I know my blog has had a dark edge so far this year, but things are changing around for me. I’m living the dream one day at a time. Life is good.

Getting close to halfway

Halfway bridge

Orthodox New Years

2010-01-14T09:48:00.000-08:00

For the past several days children have been going from door to door armed with bells and other noise makers and singing, or in most cases, screaming non-comprehendible ditties. In exchange for their carols the children expect, and vehemently demand money and/or candy. Let me tell you, these little lambs hold no reserve to giving you the death stare when you don’t dish out their desired reward. It wasn’t that I was unimpressed with their enthusiasm- I was simply wiped out of petty cash after two spontaneous choirs had come to the door and mopped up. After several rounds of dirty looks when I came up empty handed for subsequent groups I decided to Ebenezer myself out of St. Vascile’s Day and let them pound away at the door while I read a book inside.

Upon waking up this morning, I stumbled out of my warm bed and groggily dragged myself into the kitchen anticipating a large, steaming mug of instant coffee. Before I even had the chance to fully open my eyes my host mother showered me with rice and wished me luck and much success for the New Year. My Romanian doesn’t click in until at least ten minutes after my mind has gotten a chance to wake up, and all I could muster was a muttered “You too”. That was my first encounter with the New Year on the Orthodox calendar, which they cleverly now call the Old New Year (see also New Christmas, and Regular Christmas, which is on January 7th). Throughout the rest of my day I have been showered by fistfuls of corn, rice, and sunflower seeds and wished a blessed new year. I wish I could have seen the celebration on January 1st, because they say that the old New Years isn’t widely celebrated as that one, but by the looks of all the offices and sidewalks, I would say it was quite a success for the pigeons.

I know in my last blog post I was pretty down on myself, and my situation. “Situation” might not be the right word for it, because that sounds more like someone getting knocked up out of wedlock than it does for choosing to volunteer in the second world and feeling depressed. I won’t lie and say that is has been an easy adjustment back to site. I have had to do a lot of self-reflection and try to piece together what my priorities are in life, and what my Peace Corps service means, and has meant to me. It can be frustrating to look back on the past seven months in country and not see any tangible results that I have made in my community. At times it feels as if the host country nationals are purposely trying to make things harder by having such close-minded mentalities. I want to be fair and say that not all Moldovans are close-minded. I have met many progressive and forward-thinking individuals here; I just feel that there is a certain clash of mindsets when a young, enthusiastic American volunteer comes into a small village and tries to start projects with farmers and community members that have grown up with a Communist regime; For the most part they were given everything they had during this time, and stole what they didn’t. I want to make my point very, very clear here, I am not bashing on Moldova, Moldovans, or the USSR. Talking with the people here I have heard stories of families raiding the collective farms at night for more food and unimaginable corruption from governmental officials during the Soviet era, and it is no mystery that it has been a difficult and taxing transition into a democratic state over the past eighteen years. The government now is teetering by, Parliament has been unsuccessful to elect a president for about a year now, and everyone will tell you the main problem here in Moldova is lack of money. That is where my frustration comes in. If I even mention the word project, they think of grants and money. I would say 90% of my project ideas have been shut down because of lack of enthusiasm because of some sort of monetary issue. I am getting to the point where I cringe when I hear the word ‘grant’.

Another pressing source of anxiety for me has been the feeling that I am letting life pass me by. The slow paced life here definitely wears away at the notion of high adventure in the Peace Corps. It is all too easy to forget that I voluntarily signed up for the loneliness, aggravation, and detachment that comes along with the grass roots work we are doing here. I hope this message rings clear to everyone reading this that is thinking of joining the Peace Corps- This is not a vacation. If you want to go into a program where the PC says you must be a self-starter, they aren’t bullshitting you. I knew this would be hard coming into it, but I didn’t know what that meant until now. Everyday I have struggled with my test of faith, so to speak. The question of “Can I possibly do this for the next eighteen months?” is always in the back of my mind, but somewhere deep, deep down, I know that I can. I will probably be posing that question to myself everyday for the remainder of my time here, but the internal disappointment I would go through for the rest of my life would be too great if I were give into it and quit. This internal drive is crucial, but with that being said, if it weren’t for talking with my friends, family, and the extremely supportive Peace Corps medical officer I would be in a lot worse shape. Many thanks are due to my fellow PCVs for feeling as equally shitty coming back from vacation as I did. I know this sounds quite sadistic, but if I were going through this slump alone, well, it wouldn’t be pretty.

On the brighter side, my partners collaborated with me today about a future project that I can spearhead. They want a water tower to be constructed in the village. Potable water is something to be desired here and sanitary, functioning water towers have quite a high value. My partners don’t know it yet, but I have a burning desire to paint my face on the side of a water tower that I construct; it’s a weird fascination, but then again, I have had a lot of time to daydream. It’s just really nice to get feedback from my partners instead of shooting into the dark and proposing project ideas that I think will work without any input until they reject them. Did you know that blind people are legally allowed to hunt in Texas (no surprise there actually) and Michigan? That’s how I’ve felt proposing projects.

For now things are picking up. I guess that’s the good thing about slumps, you have nowhere to go but up. To my amusement, I decided to grow a beard. If my village didn’t know what to make of me before I went off and committed hygienic taboo, they really think I’m off my rocker now. Lately there has been a lot of speculation that I left for two weeks and joined the Church, since only the Orthodox priests have beards here. I was coming in from a mud/ice/snow run today that even I admit was quite insane to run in, but had to smile when I overheard someone say, “There goes that crazy foreigner”. As for now, Happy Old New Years.

Yes Please

2010-01-09T07:32:00.000-08:00

Congratulations are in order for myself. I have made it seven months thus far to date in Moldova. There won’t be much celebrating though, because as it turns out my host family is away for an undetermined amount of time, I am sitting alone in my cold apartment, my internet isn’t working, and now, my Kindle doesn’t want to turn on. To top it off, I am on medication for my stomach because I picked up giardia in Turkey and now am prohibited from eating anything but rice and can’t even grab a beer if I wanted.

My vacation to Turkey was amazing. The weather was perfectly sunny when I flew into Istanbul and I spent the first day and a half lazily wandering through the city trying to take it all the new signs, sounds, and smells. I won’t get too in-depth about my vacation except that I couldn’t have picked a better place to kick back an unwind. We spent two days in Istanbul, and then traveled inland to Cappadocia where we took a hot air balloon ride over the lunar landscape. After celebrating my friend’s birthday and New Years there, we spent several days on the Aegean Sea touring Ephesus, the Virgin Mary’s House, St. John’s Basilica, etc. We ended our trip back in Istanbul and were able to finish up some shopping and enjoy some wonderful cuisine.

The hard part has definitely been coming back. Turkey has such a rich and vibrant culture, where most everyone you meet there is nice and wants to show you how beautiful their country is. The country is quite modern, and has a booming tourism industry and it shows that they know how to treat/react to the presence of foreigners. That isn’t the case in Moldova. People are quite shocked that you are here, and a lot of the time you can mistake their stoic-ness for unfriendliness. The hardest part is walking through the drab surroundings, slugging through ice and mud up to an apartment that you know will be cold, to food that you know will be bland, to conversations that you know you will not be able to understand, and all the while missing your family, your friends, your vacation, and the assurance that when you turn that water facet/light switch on, it will do exactly what you want it to.

Today has been one of the toughest days mentally to be here. Depression is a bitch, and I’m hoping that once I start working again and get my mind actively engaged that I won’t continue to feel this shitty. The killer for me is feeling so alone. I need interactions to survive. I was talking with other PC volunteers getting back from vacation, and we all agreed that we can be happy here, but it isn’t the same gratification that you get when you are back home. In the mean time, I’m grateful to be alive, healthy, and have such a great family and friends. I’ll be singing a different tune once springtime rolls around. Peace.

Sun with teeth

2009-12-19T03:10:00.000-08:00

Walking through town
Edge of the park

Dude shoveling the snow in front of the "White House"

Going to the ATM

Dog looking miserably cold in front of the milk stand.

Shot of the main street in my village.

People are waiting at the designated hitchhiking spot on the edge of the village.

The road to Balti.

Behind the old wine factory. This path leads to my apartment building.

Pasture covered in snow. All the sheep went home for winter.

Peace.

We have one snow plow in town.

Dashing through the snow.

Road to the future.

Lumps of snow.

Typical moldovan house

Factory shot

Badass russian car

Snowmen are for suckers

2009-12-17T23:53:00.000-08:00

Well, it’s official- It’s cold, and I don’t mean “Oh I’ll grab a jacket and a beanie” kind of cold. I went for a walk yesterday and was worried about every piece of unexposed skin getting frostbite. Last night it dipped down to about 0 degrees F, and tonight it’s supposed to get a lot colder. Something to look forward to I guess.

While walking yesterday (it started out as a run, but it was impossible to run in two and a half feet of powder) I got the urge to build a snowman. Being from the south, this was the first time I had ever attempted such a feat. In hindsight, it was a bad idea because I now feel completely worthless and couldn’t even shape a snowball larger than a softball. I’m going to blame my shortcomings on the unstickiness of the snow, rather than my intelligence. I must have watched too much Charlie Brown as a kid, because I even resorted to hiking up a large hill and trying to roll the snowball down to amass a larger ball. That didn’t work, and I felt about as confused as a baby in a stripe club because this was one method that I was sure would work seeing that in every cartoon the giant snowball eats up everyone in it’s path while rolling down the mountain. I'm going to try again in a couple days, but in the meantime I'm going to do a little research on how to build snowmen. For now, it's Moldova 1, Neal 0 (I just found a store in my village that sells fireworks ALL YEAR LONG, so I've got a feeling the score will even out soon enough).

I’m trying not to turn this blog post into a rant, but I’m getting tired of the short days as well. It gets dark at 4pm! Whoever came up with Daylights Savings Time was a real genius. I would much rather sun later in the day than in the morning when I don’t need it. For some reason, I feel like I’ve heard that it was implemented for farmers, but I can tell you without a doubt there is no farming going on here. It will be nice once the Winter Solstice is here, and the days will actually start getting longer instead of shorter.

I was supposed to go visit Vince’s village and stay with him and a couple of our friends for the weekend, but I’m snowed in. Earlier today I watched as several cars attempted to make their way down the main road in my village. It reminded me a lot like ping-pong and I’m really glad I didn’t own a car that was unfortunate enough to be parked alongside the road at that time. One car literally bounced its way down the entire road hitting about 10 parked cars in the process. After seeing the cars get crunched, I’m not willing to jeopardize my life by riding in a three-hour rutiera ride on icy roads to the border of Moldova and Ukraine. Next week the temperature is supposed to warm up, and my host mother told me that all the snow will turn into mud and it’s not going to be pretty. I was a little upset about this, mainly because I don’t want to be slugging through knee-deep mud everywhere, but also because it would be nice to have a white Christmas for the first time in my life. But then I realized that if the weather keeps up like this, and I get stuck in Moldova and can’t fly to Turkey on time, I would be pissed. Capital P. Melt that snow and ice, get the runway clear, I’m ready for a little break; besides, it doesn’t even feel like Christmas. I haven’t heard one Christmas carol or seen any decorations. Not that this is such a huge disappointment to me- it is actually quite nice to get away from the commercialization of holidays. I know this is a weird place to end the blog, but it’s getting quite nippy in here and I’m going to feed the fire. Take care.

Blizzard

2009-12-16T02:25:00.000-08:00

Moldovan garden in the winter

Downtown Telenesti

Center of town

Small park near my work

My office building

Wild dog

House around the corner from me.

This is my street

In front of my apartment building

My apartment building's well

View from my window

As you can see, it's officially winter here now. A storm came through a day or two ago and the snow has yet to relent. Everyone seems frisky with the new weather, and I must admit it definitely makes the landscape more beautiful. I took a run in the blizzard yesterday, and let me assure you that's a lot easier said than done. The temperature is supposed to get down to -15 F this weekend so hopefully I won't be frozen solid and can put up another blog post. I'm making some chili right now so I am cutting this short and just putting up pictures.

What else can we deep fry?

2009-12-14T01:52:00.001-08:00

Buna diminasta! I hope everyone is doing well and fully appreciating your central heating and fireplaces (or warm weather if you are fortunate enough). As I’m writing this, I am sitting here huddled in my room with two pairs of wool socks on, a beanie, sweats and long johns while drinking a cup of hot tea and I’m still cold. I would have a heater that Peace Corps supplies for us, except they gave me a monster that wants to burn down my apartment, so rather than start an electrical fire and set the place ablaze, I will wait for the soba (fireplace) we have on the 5th floor do it for me.

I was walking to the main road this morning to hitchhike to my village and was taking in the full beauty of the place- the green rye grass in the fields with horses briskly running around, the giant hill in front of me with tilled, dark earth and while doing this I managed to find the ONLY patch of ice on the road and did a very gracious skid with arms flailing almost taking out a baba walking in front of me. She turned around, looked me front head-to-toe and back, and muttered “Be careful boy”. Point well taken; I know out of everyone I would be the one to end up breaking an arm while walking. Soon enough it will be time to get the Yak-Traks out.

This weekend my raion mates and I threw a Deep South Bash in a Northern Village party for our fellow Ag’s and COD’s. Toumil, who lives in the next village over from me that has been here for 22 months now, has three houses on her host family’s compound where we were able to accommodate everyone. Friday night everyone came in and we rolled out a huge Tex-Mex feast that included tacos, quesadillas, salsa, wild rice, fried onions, pickles, and jalapenos that I am guessing was well received because there wasn’t a speck of food left over. After we spent the evening doing some taste testing of the local wine, we geared up and went to the village disco. After five hours of intermittent sleep I was woken up at 7 o’clock and got the day going. I must say we did a great job of wasting the day away by swapping stories and cracking jokes, and was finally forced to go heat up a gigantic pot of zama (soup) for lunch. Afterward, all the guys helped stack a tree’s worth of cutup firewood in a shed, with several wine pauses in the middle preempted by Toumil’s host father. There was a light snow and it was nice being able to help out one of the nicest Moldovans I have met here.

Saturday night I recruited some sous chefs to help me prepare enough jambalaya to feed a small army. I fully appreciate the hard work that Moldovan women put into getting food on the table, because I can tell you it isn’t easy when you have limited running water, two dull knives, and two burners on a stove. Lets just say I’m not exactly well versed in the kitchen, and have a lot more experience eating feasts than I do preparing them. While stirring the roux like crazy, I had to frantically call my mother to interrogate her on how much water to add to the rice. In the end the meal turned out fantastic if I do say so myself, and the food was practically wiped out in half an hour. Everyone got a little rowdy that night and Sunday morning there were some painful expressions of peoples’ faces. Hopefully it was well worth it.

All in all a great weekend spent with great people. I brought my camera with me, but the batteries were dead so I wasn’t able to take a single picture. I’m just going to have to commit this one to memory. I would like to say thank you to everyone that came, you guys have quickly become some of my best friends and it would have been really tough sticking it out here for this long if it weren’t for you. I had the chance to make new friends this weekend, and thoroughly enjoyed talking with Jami, one of the coolest ladies that I have met. To all the M22s, thank you for being our guiding lights and mentors, it won’t be the same without you when you all leave in April. To my 24’s, congrats on the half year mark and I look forward to the next year and a half with you, and to the future M25s, get ready, this is one hell of a ride and I can tell you we all are anxiously waiting your arrival. Thanks to everyone that helped prepare food and clean up this weekend. For the supervisors- you all were quite worthless, but did a great job of keeping the rest of us entertained. Drum bun si voi iti vadea in anul nou!

Mi-e dor de casa

2009-12-10T09:58:00.000-08:00

As of December 8th I have surpassed the half-year mark for being in Peace Corps. The last thing I remember from home was leaving my family at the small security check-in at the Baton Rouge airport, trying to read a book but couldn’t concentrate, and so I resorted to pacing up and down the only two terminals because I couldn’t control my nerves while blaring “It’s My Life” by Bon Jovi and “Leather So Soft” by Lil’ Wayne. Looking back, I had absolutely NO IDEA what I was getting myself into, and as much as people said not to form any expectations before starting my service, I did (I think this is a human tendency that I can’t be faulted for, except I do have a vivid imagination). I have commented on this topic before in other blog posts, but I have decided to revise my opinion about the passing of time. Many of my fellow volunteers in my group will remark how quickly the first six months have passed, and I can see where they are coming from, but my official stance on this matter is that it feels a lot longer, at least a year.

I was on the phone the other day with my friend Michael from back home and he asked me “So how long have you been there? A year?” At first I was kind of shocked that he didn’t remember that I only left in June, but then when I started thinking about it, a lot of crazy shit has happened between now and then that I wouldn’t have imagined being able to squeeze into six months. I’ve learned (well still in the process) a new language that I had never heard before except from the gypsy in the movie Children of Men and from a couple mumblings from the movie Borat, where the beginning of the movie was filmed in Romania and you can hear one of the guys saying “Imi pare rau Borat!”- I’m sorry Borat!. I have also lived with three different host families, made some great friendships, sat at many endless masas, fell through an outhouse, slaughtered several animals for a meal, danced in countless hora circles, lost a couple billion brain cells due to vin de casa (Moldovan house wine), read a plethora of books, watched more than a lifetime’s worth of movies (My latest conquest was The Godfather trilogy all in one day, I highly recommend this if you have the time), hitchhiked most of the country, harvested tons (literally) of fruits and vegetables by hand, and last but not least, have made a fool out of myself 4,623,899 times and counting.

The time passing slowly does not mean that I haven’t enjoyed myself. I would like to reiterate that I really like what I am doing here and I love this country and it’s people. However complacent I am with my life here, I do get a kink in my stomach when I start thinking about home and the people and things I miss. I guess it would be out of fashion if I didn’t make a list of these for you, so here it goes, just remember that this is in no particular order:

* Gas station chicken salad sandwiches.
* Amstel Light
* Driving my car
* The LSU lakes and the calming effect they had over me
* Fishing
* Reliable technology
* School
* Football games
* Late nights at Louie’s
* Cranking down the AC at night
* The ability to choose what I want to eat and when to eat it
* The exuberant amount of food choices there are
* Whole Foods
* Hot showers with steady water pressure
* Not killing animals that I eat
* A wardrobe that included more than the same six shirts and two pairs of pants
* Riding my bicycle
* Good coffee
* Road trips
* Spontaneous trips to the gas station, WalMart, the movies, and Counter Culture
* Sarcasm
and of course, hands down without a doubt, My friends and family.

Wow, remind me not to do that again. I’ve been staring at the wall for a good fifteen minutes now thinking about people from home and how much I would like to be with them right now. Moving on….I’m co-hosting a party this weekend and when I told my host mother that there will be 20 to 25 PCVs in the village, she almost fell out of her chair laughing. I couldn’t help but join her because we turn some heads when there are two of us much less a herd walking down the street. I can’t wait to see people and get to hang out. December has been shaping up to be a really good month. I’ve got the party this weekend, going to see my friends at Vince’s new apartment in his village next weekend, and then it’s Christmas after that and I’m off to Turkey for a trip that I have been anticipating since I’ve gotten here. No new pictures to post, sorry folks the mundane landscape has gotten pretty drab and not very exciting to take pictures of. I should be able to get some good ones this weekend. Păce.

Peanut butter cookies

2009-12-05T04:59:00.000-08:00

Hello world. I’m sitting in the Peace Corps lounge right now craving a cup of coffee, but I know that if I buy a single packet, the store clerk won’t give me change for the large bill I have in my wallet. This is actually quite a common occurrence here that can be quite amusing and frustrating at the same time. In Moldova the currency is the Moldovan lei, with about 11:1 ($ to lei) ratio, and they have 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500 lei bills, plus coins but they are made of plastic and are practically worthless and I don’t mess around with them. For some reason, the ATM at the bank in my village loves to give me 200 and 500 lei bills, which no one likes to accept. I tried buying some bananas and eggs the other day (my post workout ritual meal here in Moldova) and tried paying with a 500. The lady looked at me like I was insane. So I tried a 200, same “You are crazy if you think I will accept this” look. I had to go around to three different shops asking if they could break the bill. Frustrating.

Life is good here. It finally started getting cold again which caught me by surprise this morning. On the bus ride here I was pretty sure that I had frostbite in my toes and made sure to keep wiggling them to stay warm. I’m not sure if this actually helps, but I’m going to keep doing it hoping that it does something. Work has been good, nothing too exciting going on right now. We did find out that my organization is going to continually be funded by the government and USAID, which is always good seeing that my partners and I would be out of a job if it wasn’t it. I let the cat out of the bag to my partners and told them that I wanted to move to a small village so I can be in the proximity to farmers and the land. It seemed to shock them that I want to move to a smaller village, and give up amenities such as indoor plumbing, hot water, a shower, etc, but when I explained that I thought I would be living in a hut for the two years, and wanted that, they seemed enthusiastic to find me a place to live. So for the next two weeks I will be traveling to several villages, making masas, and seeing if anything catches my fancy. I’ve got a pretty good idea that it will involve lots of food and festivities, and seeing that it is custom here to get your guests nice and liquored up (you have failed as a host if your guests don’t stumble out the door) it should be interesting.

This is actually something new with work. At the beginning of every month I have to type the action plans that each of the ten local consultants submit to us, compile this data in a master spreadsheet, and send it to the main office in the capital. This work is delegated to me because I can type a thousand times faster than they can, and it’s a way to keep me occupied and makes me feel like I am contributing. I asked my partner why the consultants don’t send these to us in the electronic form, saving me a day’s worth of work. This turned into an organic discussion and for the next couple months I will be spending a couple days with each of the consultants in their villages teaching them computer skills for a day, and then the next day they will be teaching me about their areas of expertise in agriculture. Win-win-win, 20 days spent getting in touch with the people. Alright peeps, I’ve got to go out and shake some more hands, kiss some more babies.

Hai

2009-11-30T23:21:00.000-08:00

The eyes’ of winter are upon us, and it’s hard to believe that I have been here for half a year already. In some regards time has flown by, and that not that long ago I was in intense language lessons and anxiously waiting my site announcement. On the other hand, I have felt the time crawl by minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour. At times I feel as if I am living in a parallel universe, or somewhere in between, and can’t seem to find a way out. Slowly, but surely, I am becoming accustomed to living here and I am excited to see what a new season will bring.

This was my first Thanksgiving away from home and as much as I tried to suppress my yearning to be home, it still found a way to creep back in. This weekend I went into the capital and met up with most of the other volunteers here. We were able to go out, have some laughs, play football, and eat a Thanksgiving feast together. I’m glad I went, and I would have been down in the dumps if I hadn’t have gone, but it simply didn’t feel like Thanksgiving. A lot of the volunteers made dishes and brought it to the meal, and it was almost like I was tasting a little bit of everyone’s Thanksgivings from back home, yet none came close to the tastes, sights, and smells that I associate with Thanksgiving at my parent’s house.

I’m sorry that this has been such a short blog post. My host mother is very sick and I’m trying to pick up the slack and help in any way I can. As for now I have to fetch more firewood. Peace.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T03:46:00.000-08:00

I’d like to start this blog entry off saying happy birthday to my mother. Throughout this journey she has been there encouraging and inspiring me to do my best. She has definitely helped pull me through some dark moods while here, and I cannot thank her, and my family enough. Mulți ani și mult success inainte. Fii sanitos.

The weather here has been unseasonably warm, but I’m not complaining. The days have been averaging 13 degrees Celsius and nights around 0 degrees. Perfect fall weather considering I thought it was going to be snowing everyday and I would be a popsicle already. This past Saturday I went to my friend MacKensie’s village for hram, which I found out is the celebration of the village’s patron saint. His village, Chiștilniștă, celebrates hram on St. Michael’s day, as well as a lot of other villages from what I heard. The weather was really nice- the sun was shining, the air was crisp, and it wasn’t bitterly cold. I hopped on a bus headed to the capital, but since his village is off the main road by about 18 kilometers, I had to get off and blaze a different route. Since it was so nice outside I decided to stretch my legs and walk through two small villages before I stuck my thumb out for a ride.

The village that I went to is actually one of the largest in my raion with about 4,300 people. The gravel top road getting there was pretty tore up, and I suspect that in the wintertime it might be quite difficult to traverse. When I finally got a ride, the guy asked me where I was from and was absolutely shocked when I replied “America”. Some of the best conversations I’ve had now in Moldova have been with strangers that pick me up on the side of the road. It seems they are baffled that they just picked up an American that speaks their language (or tries to at least) in the middle of nowhere and they can’t help but be intrigued and probe to see what the hell I’m doing here.

When I got to my friend’s house, his little old baba made me feel right at home and made food appear out of nowhere; before I knew it we had a spread of meat, fish, potatoes, ratchatouri (cold meat in jello), fruit, bread, and dessert in front of us. This little old lady was awesome and carried around a pitcher of homemade rachui (distilled wine that has been turned into straight hooch that DEFINITELY puts some hair on your chest) around wherever she went forcing people to be happy and take a shot. Lots of family ended up coming over, and another volunteer that is our raion-mate joined us later that day for the celebration. It was a legit masa, decked out with food covering every square inch of tabletop, with several rounds of food coming in hot from the kitchen. It seems customary to start dinners off with a glass or two of champagne, move onto wine, and then to make sure you’ve got a good buzz they bust out the cognac or rachui. After the masa ended around 11, we wobbled down to the casa de nunta (wedding reception hall) in the center and danced the hora for a couple hours. The dancing was fun, but I can’t help but feel like a jackass when I dance the hora and somehow manage to screw up a seemingly easy dance. To make matters worse, all Moldovans are inherently good at dancing and start learning the hora before they are out of diapers and so all the Americans dancing their national dance is quite the spectacle for them. Mark my words, by the time I finish my service, I will be a horing machine.

The next morning we got up early for an 8:30 breakfast and had a repeat masa from the night before. Leftovers were spread out on the table in the same arrangement as the night before, and the baba kept coming by making us take shots of the devil’s water. After breakfast we decided to take a tour of the village. It was strange feeling walking through the foggy streets, buzzed off instant coffee and 150 proof homemade liquor, checking out the monastery and other sights. We had to make it back to the house for noon to make the bus that was going to pick us up so we wouldn’t have to hitchhike back to our villages. Once on the bus, MacKensie’s host mom came charging on with pitcher in hand and peer pressured everyone on the bus to take a shot, driver included. Once we got going, one of the old ladies that had been at our masa busted out a monstrous bottle homemade wine, and of course, kept filling the cup and passing it around until everyone on the bus drained a large shot glass. The driver was the last one to get the glass, but it would be impolite if everyone was drinking and he wasn’t, so hai noroc! I had to get off in the town Orhei to go grocery shopping, and I’m glad I got off that party bus when I did, I don’t think I could make it all the way to Chisinau.

This is completely unrelated, but remember what I said in my last blog post about garlic and onions helping the flu? In the New York Times this week there was an article about how the Moldovan army ordered tons of extra garlic and onions to help ward off the swine flu. I told my host mom about the article, and since then I have noticed we’ve been eating an unordinary amount of both. You eat whole garlic cloves here, and after dinner I make a beeline straight for the bathroom to brush my teeth. I’m going to have to cut that out if I decide to leave my village and see other people.

This week has been uneventful except for a couple unfortunate occurrences. We didn’t have running water for over a week, and when you run or go to the gym everyday, well you can imagine the odor. When we finally got the water back, I desperately needed to wash my clothes and figured I would give our Russian washing machine a whirl. I’ve never seen more buttons on an electrical appliance than on that washing machine, but it looked like it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out. There was one tiny problem however- it was all in Russian. Long story short, I now have a load of dark clothes that fit a midget. Fantastic.

The other thing that happened to me roughly follows the same theme and it took place when I was showering last night. I consider myself quite fortunate to be placed in a house with running water and a hot shower that I can use when the water actually decides to work. The bathtub is really slippery and when I was trying to soap my back I slipped, went crashing down pulling the curtain and rod with me, and the worst part is that I had the detachable shower head in my hand and the cord broke, causing water to start spraying EVERYWHERE. While lying there naked, wrapped in a shower curtain with water misting across my face I realized that I have the worst luck because this is not the first time I have slipped in the tub in Moldova. On the way down I smashed my head against the back of the tub, and now have a huge lump and a headache that won’t go away. Not only that but I ruined my hot shower amenity, and am going to be bucket bathing from here on out.

Speaking of a headache, it’s starting to pulsate and I’ve got to type up the December action plans for work. I would go into detail about my projects, but they are pretty stagnate right now and I am in the process of looking for financing for my greenhouse project. I can find tons of grants for US farmers, but none to start a project in Moldova. There’s got to be a way, and if there is I will figure it out. If worse comes to worst, I’m a walking tax deductible and will be hitting you all up for donations.

I hope each and every one of you has a very happy Thanksgiving, no matter if you are reading this from America, Europe, Asia, or Africa. I may not be with friends and family from back home this year, but I will be there in spirit. Thank you to everyone for all your supportive emails, letters, phone calls, text messages, care-packages, and messages on this blog. You all are truly my inspiration and sounding board, and even if I have never met you before, but you decided to respond to a post, thank you. Lastly, I would like to thank all my fellow Peace Corps volunteers- whether you are a RPCV or currently serving, I admire your courage, your dedication, and whether you realize it or not, you have made, and continue to make a difference. Thank you for helping make this world a better place.

On my walk down the main highway in Moldova.

Cool little road leading to the unknown.

Hey there buddy!

Random little church I found on the side of the road.

MacKensie's turkys with blue paint on them. I call them the Blue Meanies

MacKensie's yard and his mean man-eating geese

Barn and casa mare
Pretty sure this is a corn crib, but I remember reading in books as a kid that people would sleep in their corn cribs (Where The Red Fern Grows is a good example). This just doesn't look comfortable.
The basement with the preservatives for winter and the wine barrels in the background.
Cows are coming home.
Round one of the masa
Not really sure where this bridge came from.
Monastery
Crucifix
La joc doing the hora at the casa de nunta

Gripa

2009-11-16T08:50:00.000-08:00

Well, inevitability, it has come to Moldova. The pandemic A H1N1 has reached this remote part of the world and has already infected 630+ people and has taken five lives. Last week I decided to watch the movie 28 Days Later, and because I had nothing else to do, followed it up by watching 28 Weeks Later. After that I got online and read an email Peace Corps had sent us saying that the swine flu had breached Moldova’s borders and that extreme caution was to be taken. Needless to say, it was a strange feeling to have just spent 3 and a half hours watching movies about a deadly virus and then get this email.

Schools were out on fall break for the first week of November, and because of the gripa (swine flu), schools were closed for an additional week. Everyone you talk to now seems to be concerned about the swine flu, and many are taking quite drastic prevention methods. As for the scientific accuracy of these Moldovan anti-gripa methods, I can’t say, but they are quite amusing.

Moldovan flu prevention methods:
* Wear masks when in big cities
* Tie cloth soaked in alcohol on every doorknob
* Wipe your feet on towels soaked in alcohol at the entrance of the schools
And the most important-
*Eat lots of garlic, onions, spicy food, and lemons
As my sister pointed out to me yesterday on the phone, the ingredients sound like the essentials for a crawfish boil. At my gym yesterday I had to inquire at the reasoning of 50 raw onions placed around the room, and was told “Pentru gripa” –For the flu, in an almost mocking manner suggesting a “Duh, you stupid American” was to be followed. Other possible answers that I probably would have taken more serious would have been “Vampires” and “Werewolves”.

This past weekend I had friends come in town and we ended up staying in the village next to mine where I helped kill the pig last week (If you haven’t checked out the pictures already, check out the entry from last Friday the 13th and follow the link. The album is pretty much a chronicle of the entire event; needless to say it gets a little gory). Last night while at a masa we met the richest guy in the village and he promised to bring us to his sand factory this morning to check out a dinosaur fossil they found fifteen meters underground. He also promised me to go wild boar hunting, but I’m not sure if that’s going to happen since he got loaded last night and didn’t wake up in time to show us the factory before my friends had to leave. All in all the weekend was great. I’m glad I had a chance to catch up with good friends. We got to check out the discotec, a tobacco factory, a new water tower project that another PCV implemented, and had several masas with Moldovans. Good times.

Tonight at 11:30 is the peak of a meteor shower that I’m going to try to check out, but after the three days of entertaining and running off minimal sleep I’m feeling pretty rundown. My host mother told me that we are going to be having garlic and onion mashed potatoes for dinner just in case I’m coming down with the gripa. Sounds delicious da? Hai devii.

Link to pictures

2009-11-13T03:13:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to view pictures of preparing a pig for a wedding. Enjoy!

Discotechs and birthday parties

2009-11-08T03:14:00.000-08:00

Buenos dias! An unusual warm front has swept through Moldova and I actually saw the sun for the first time in about a month. It has definitely helped my spirits. This winter should be very interesting; I’ve started to stockpile vitamins to combat the Seasonal Affective Disorder that is a problem in Moldova and for Peace Corps Moldova volunteers. I was trying to get information from my partner about the amount of sunlight in the winter, because it is quite relevant for my solar panel greenhouse project and for my general curiosity, and he simply replied “Nehlu, don’t worry. Spring will be here in April and you will have all the sun you want.” Not exactly the answer I was looking for.

Today is my host mother’s birthday and the women are busy in the kitchen preparing a feast for a party that starts in two hours. I wanted to help, but instead I was seated at the table and assumed the role of taste tester. No problem on this end, it felt like Thanksgiving back home, yet sadly no turkey. What amazed me most is that the ladies prepared enough food to feed all of Russia and then some, and they did it all with no running water. Next time you are trying to host a party try preparing everything with no running water, two knives (very dull and not serrated), two pots, one pan, and an annoying foreigner in your kitchen butchering your language. Bine ați venit la Moldova.

To tell you the truth, I would really like to be curled up in my bed taking a nap right now instead of prepping myself for a long day at the masa. Last night I was somehow talked into going out to a discotech in a small village next to mine called Verejeni. Dancing until four in the morning with Moldovans to Michael Jackson techno remixes in a lazered out, fogged up, discotech that looked like a cave is one experience I wouldn’t trade for the world. The celebrity status that we enjoy here when we’re out and about is quite fun. It’s going to be weird going out in America and not having the owners of the place invite me to their table and spoil me with attention and anything else I want. After last night’s debauchery, I rolled out of bed (all Moldovan furniture turn into beds-it’s amazing) at 8:30 and hitchhiked back to my village just in time to buy the last bouquet of flowers in the market for my mama gazda.

The pictures below are from the village I was in. It was the first time I visited there, and was very impressed. The village is set 2 kilometers off the main road and it’s a beautiful walk through the valley past horses and goats, over a bridge, and up a hill to the village. My desire to move to a smaller village continues, and this one made a very good impression on me. I was able to talk with a man that works at the mayor’s office that wants to undertake a major project with my organization to help define the property rights in the area. It is a big project, and it plays a critical role if development is to occur. After the large, Soviet collective farms, called kolhozes, were dismantled the land was given to each member of the village and/or kolhoz. The system was a bit chaotic and there is still a huge problem with unclear title and property rights. If you think about the difference between developed and developing countries, I bet that you will find that developed countries all share the characteristic that property rights are defined and there isn’t this wild-west mentality over who owns the land. I would love to help with the implementation of this project and it would significantly increase future possibilities for the region, the producers, and the citizens. With the state of the economy, the country is in desperate need of foreign investments, but what firm would want to invest in a place where the title of ownership is unclear and can be retracted on a whim?

The rest of this week has been relatively quiet. I’ve spent most of my time researching irrigation, green energy, rabbit farms, and greenhouses while trying my hand at day trading on the stock market (to an extent). It’s amazing the amount of free time I have on my hands when the only schedule I have revolves around meals. I have gotten myself into the bad habit of watching television series that I downloaded onto my external hard drive. The series Deadwood so far has consumed my nights for the past week and a half. I’m trying to get back into reading more, but the book I’m currently reading about the history of a Russian village is a tad dry (yet interesting), and I can only take about 30 minutes before I have to put it down. I’m determined not to abandon it, but at this rate the fate of the book doesn’t look too bright.

Since it’s cold now I’ve started going to the gym more instead of running. The gym is pretty sparse, but it has the basics and I’m happy. The owner of it is Domnul Volva, a tank of a man that insists I start Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bodybuilding routine from the 1980’s. This past Friday he was quite boisterous about it, and kept shoving the old magazine (written entirely in Russian) at me, and insisted that I follow it. I respect the fact that he is thirty years my senior, but there is no way I’m doing fifty squats in a Smith machine and ruin my back. When in doubt I usually give people the “N-am inteles”-I don’t understand, and do what I want. He caught on pretty quick, and flipped out and yelled at me in Russian to do what I want, just don’t expect any help from him again (this is the edited, clean version). I was okay with that, although in no way was it my intention to make him loose his temper, and I turned my iPod on and proceeded to have a great workout Upon leaving, we reconciled and both apologized, a rare occurrence between Moldovan men, and am glad that I didn’t loose one of the few friends I have in my village.

My exhaustion and hunger have reached monumental heights, and it has taken me two hours to write this entry. I wish the party wasn’t going to take place in my room, I really need to rest my eyes for a minute. I realize I do a bad job of taking pictures here, and I promise I will work on that. Here are a few to keep you entertained:

A Moldova taekwondo club

Another volunteer's house

My gym

Outside of my gym

Random pack of turkeys that roam outside of my apartment

My host mothers birthday party.

* I found that you can click on the pictures to make them bigger. It helps for the landscape shots.

Zi de zi

2009-11-02T12:07:00.000-08:00

Question: What happens when you leave thirty kilos of grapes scattered throughout your room for a month?

Back at site. Bittersweet. It’s nice to be back home, but PST was fun and it was good getting to go to school everyday and be with friends. My Romanian has gotten better, that’s for sure. I find myself not talking as much Romanian, or any language for that matter, some days as I would like when I’m in my village. It is quite easy to amble throughout the day getting by on basic Romanian without getting into any riveting conversations where I explore the depths of my newly acquired linguistic abilities. Sometimes I wish I lived in a smaller village. Take today for instance, I have learned a couple new words here and there (I’ve already forgotten them because I forgot to write them down), but I haven’t really needed to speak much.

Here’s what my day looked like:
7:00am- Woke up, ate breakfast with the fam, and bummed around the house for awhile and finished watching a movie.
9:00am- Went to work for a total of 20 minutes to say hello to my partners and make flash cards. They were speaking Russian to some people that came into the office so I was excluded from that convo.
10:00am- Met with the director of economic development for ten minutes about the grant I translated. Romanian was solely spoken so that was good. He taught me the word “cupici de casa”-house slippers.
10:20am- Went to the piața, bought some pimp cupici de casa. They even have a “P” on them. I was informed that these are necessary in the wintertime. I agree, I haven’t taken them off for hours.

10:30am until 4:00pm- Ate lunch with the fam, then spent four and a half hours scouring the internet, in English, for project ideas in agriculture. Came up with an idea to start seminars about financial planning for rural farmers, the need to collaborate with the mayor’s office with the importance of pastureland management (the mayor’s offices owns the pasture land, and because of poor management practices the land and the livestock are suffering) and developed further ideas about greenhouses and irrigation.
4:00pm till 5:00pm- Went to the gym, only said a couple sentences in Romanian because the dude there speaks Russian.
5:00pm till dinner: Talked even more English to my mom in the states and then found out how to type in Romanian on my Mac.
6:30- 7:30- Dinner. Talked about rabbits in Moldova, got a brilliant idea to start a rabbit farm in my village because the meat is very hard to come by here, and it’s farte scump when you can get it, somewhere around 30 dollars for a big rabbit, yikes!
8:00pm until 8:30- Received a call from a friend back home. More English was spoken.
8:30pm until 10:30- Helped my host mom insulate all the windows here for winter. The whole time we just talked about how cold it gets, how she won’t let me freeze to death, why we need fireplaces when we have gas, etc etc.
10:30- Writing a blog, and of course using more English, and realizing that I am never going to be fluent if I continue at this inadequate rate of Romanian usage. My flash card stack is getting to be as high as Mount Kilimanjaro though.

As you can see, some real captivating stuff, which is making me wonder why I’m writing this in the first place when I just posted something two days ago. I really just wanted to let everyone know about my grapes, err, raisins now in my room…

Fact: Fruit flies outnumber you 1,000,000,000,000 to 1. My host mother looks at them and says, “Oh my God, what are we going to do about these bugs?” and leaves it at that.

PST Phase III

2009-10-31T03:07:00.000-07:00

Day 8,524
October 31, 2009

It’s amazing the striking difference between this year’s Halloween and last year’s. At this time last year I was sitting in an economics class anxiously waiting to get let out so I could finish party preparations at my house. Now, well you know the story, I am waking up in a tiny village on the other side of the world, listening to roosters crowing and drinking a cup of coffee in a country that has never even heard of Halloween.

Today marks the end of PST Phase III for the ARBDs and CODs- yes, PC loves their acronyms. Usually Peace Corps training is a power course over the first ten weeks of service. This year, the ARBDs and CODs were the first groups to switch it up and have training for eight weeks, go to our sites for two and a half months, and then finish up the last phase of PST in October (PST III). We were officially sworn in as PCVs in August, so I don’t really know if the completion of this makes us more legit, or if we just completed two more weeks of mandatory language lessons. Either way, these past two weeks have been great. My old host family in Milestii Mici was not able to host me because they had family from Italy staying with them. It would have been nice to stay with them because I really appreciate the fact that they helped get me through the first two months in this country when I knew absolutely no Romanian and nothing about Moldova, but I have had a great opportunity getting close to a new host family. I did get a chance to visit my old host family and they were blown away by the fact that we could actually have a two-sided conversation and that I’m no longer an invalid. Needless to say, it was quite the confidence booster.

Out of the thirteen original ARBDs in our group we have had four older volunteers (all above the age of 60, except for one whom was 45) drop out, and so I was placed in one of their families. I was quite lucky in the fact that I got an amazing host family. They have two kids, a boy and a girl, that are both in high school and they are a very warm and open family. If I were the older guy that had them over the summer, I would have had hard time leaving to go to my site, because as it is now I am staying an extra night and am having mixed feelings about going back to my site. On one hand, it is great feeling loved and welcome in this new family, but on the other hand I am ready to get back to my site and start developing a new project idea that I want to implement by spring.

Last night it was my host mother’s birthday and they threw a huge party for her. I showed up late because we had a meeting with the Ambassador and Peace Corps staff, and was greeted by 30 guests sitting at the table. One of the guests, I think it was my host mother’s brother-in-law, was asking me what I’m doing here and what my goals are. I try to iterate to everyone that first and foremost I am here to experience a new culture and to learn from them, and ideally, I would like to help in any capacity that I can. I usually get a good response from this that opens up the dialogue, and I thought that this conversation was headed in that direction because he then asked me how old I am. When I told him, he flipped out and started shouting that I’m too young to help and was quite hostile throughout the entire conversation. The entire table was dead quite, except for his wife who was shouting at him to shut up; the whole time his batty eyes were locked with mine. After what felt like an eternity, he stormed out of the house muttering that he had to smoke a cigarette. I was a little shaken up until the entire table rallied behind me, and were all encouraging me not to take it personally, and that they are honored to have me in their country. In that moment, I realized that they were right; I shouldn’t take it personally. I may be young, but I have seen the powerful effects the young and old Peace Corps Volunteers continually make in Moldova and in over 100 countries worldwide. This is what John F. Kennedy meant when he addressed an assembly of college students at 2 am on October 14, 1960 challenging them to go abroad to countries in need, work side by side with the people, and make a difference at the grass-roots level. I have opted to give up a comfortable life in America, away from family and friends, and move to a country where I don’t know the language or anyone else. The simple fact that I can now understand what he said a mere five months after arriving here makes me feel good. It’s people like this that make me ready to get back to my own village because I want to get to work and implement projects so that for every person that doubts that we can’t help here, I can show them differently.

I have finished translating the grant for the Regional Council for Economic Development in my region, and am waiting to see if we are awarded the funds. The scope of the grant is to setup a business incubator in my village that would help entrepreneurs start local businesses that would encourage them to stay in Moldova and not illegally immigrate abroad. I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but the size of the document and the time frame I had to translate it made for a difficult situation. I was working on it the night before it was due. I don’t like this last minute scrambling, and the lack of planning was apparent, which only reflects poorly in the grant. I learned a lot from this experience, and will make sure that the grants/proposals I work on in the future will be conducted in a new fashion. I have a project idea that I am eager to start research on because it is something that I am very interested and can benefit local Moldovan farmers. Irrigation is a big problem in Moldova, and because of bad practices the topsoil is eroding and the salinity level is rising, causing the productivity of the land to decrease. Ideally, I would like to setup a demonstration plot that can be easily replicated that is cost effective and is completely green. I want to build a greenhouse that uses solar batteries (water barrels) to heat up the space, instead of a heat source that burns propane or carbon-based fuels, and is also equipped with a drip irrigation system that utilizes a solar panel to power the water pump. This would not only help the environment, but would also extend the growing season and increase harvest from 1 to 2 times a year, to 3 or 4, help farmers feed their families and increase their livelihoods, save water, and increase the knowledge and capacity of the community. If anyone has any input on this subject, I encourage you to get in contact with me. This idea is still very young, and any ideas/resources that can be provided are welcome.

It is a beautiful, crisp autumn day outside and my host brother’s soccer game that I promised to attend started ten minutes ago. Happy Halloween. Noroc.

Yeah, I've eaten raw pig skin with fat dripping off

2009-10-18T04:35:00.000-07:00

Greetings from the lesser motherland! I sometimes wonder how I manage to get myself into precarious situations; I must have a knack for it. Whenever I think I am figuring out Moldova, I get a curveball to the face as a wake-up call, but in a good way. I’m learning how to take things more in stride, and if you could shadow me from day-to-day I think you would be quite shocked at, quite frankly, all the weird shit that I get myself into. I want to highlight my week for you with some of the more memorable moments.

I was walking up to my apartment on 4th floor the other day and was whistling a catchy tune that was stuck in my head. I passed one of my neighbors in the hallway, a sweet old baba that always gives me a toothlessly grin every time we greet, except for this time when I got chewed out. I didn’t catch most of the tirade she was yelling at me, but I got enough of the gist to figure out that my whistling was going to make everyone’s money fly out the window. Oh Russia, thank you for your superstitions, life wouldn’t be the same without them.

More stories of babas: I spent some time with my babusca and her friends several days ago shelling walnuts to sell in the market. While I wasn’t shucking, they were force feeding me a big bowl of warm brinza (homemade goat cheese, definitely not the same as feta), and for some odd reason it made me miss my own grandmother, as well as stain my hands brown for the week (from the nuts). I’ve tried everything from Gojo to gasoline to get the stain off (FYI, always take precaution when a drunk man tells you “I think this might work….”), no dice.

I was at work late last night trying to arrange some traveling plans, because for the time being it is the only place I can get internet. I’ve tried to get the internet every day for the past month, but everyday is the same and I have formed the same distain for Orange, the telephone company that sells the internet here, as I have for AT&T. Surprise, surprise, AT&T owns Orange. Bastards. That company will haunt me for the rest of my life. Sorry for that sidetrack, I was going somewhere with this story. After locking up, and bundling up to sprint home in the freezing rain, I was cornered by the janitor. I ended up drinking tea in the janitor’s closet for half an hour listening to him talk about how much he hates Romanians, and that I insulted him when I told him that I am studying the Romanian language. After listening to his sound argument about how they have different cultures, with different histories (this can be debated), and that from here on out I should only refer to the language as Moldovaneasca, I made the observation that Americans speak English, not American (this can also be debated if you happen to be in Texas). In my eyes, this is a relevant analogy, but this dude was having none of it, and our conversation came to an end soon after.

I often run into huge packs of turkeys wandering around the village. I really need to start carrying my camera around with me, because this occurrence, although frequent, always cracks me up. For some odd reason though, I am yet to eat turkey meat here in Moldova. Well, except for one time when I had a turkey club at Sky Towers in Chisinau, a ridiculously nice shopping/business center, but I don’t count that as real Moldova.

I’ve been afraid of the postal workers in my village since I got here. Getting yelled at in Russian from a heavyset woman with hairy, tumor-sized mole on her face is extremely intimidating. I had to go to the post office to buy an envelope, and when she asked where it was being sent, my partner said America. She responded “Seriously???” and of course my partner introduced me as his American. She started laughing and said that she yells Russian at me because she thought I Ukrainian. Whatever that means.

I was eating at the same little restaurant everyday for lunch, and because of my limited Romanian, and their lack of a menu, I ordered the same meal everyday: half a bowl of borst, mashed peas with a small ground meat sausage. After a month of the same lunchtime meal, I decided to venture out and try a new dish. I tried ordering chicken with rice, and received mashed peas and sausage. The next day, I tried fish and mashed potatoes, and got mashed peas with sausage. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, and I take my business to another cantina. I hope they miss my dollar-a-day business.

I started going to a new eatery for lunch. For a whooping dollar-twenty I can get my mashed peas with sausage, half a bowl of borst, and a small salad. I skip ordering the borst now (it seems like a summertime meal after eating a steaming bowl everyday for lunch during PST) and just go with the mashed peas and salad. It was a really cold day yesterday, and I decided to change it up and just get a big bowl of borst for lunch. Not only did I get my borst, but they also brought me my mashed peas and sausage. I decided to make a PBJ for lunch today instead of trying my luck and probably ending up with the same meal that I probably didn’t order.

On a more serious note, the Day of the City in Chisinau was two days ago. Every village, town, and city here has hram, which is from what I gather, similar to the town’s birthday, although not really. Hram is a pretty big deal with concerts, speeches, fireworks, and the whole shebang. This year, some yahoo decided to bring a grenade to the celebration and detonate it during one of the concerts, injuring 30 people. I’m not really sure what to make of this seeing that I was just in Chisinau for a large celebration a mere five days ago.

You ask for a dozen eggs here, and you will receive ten, not twelve.

I saw a “riot” in Chisinau several weeks ago. The city raised the prices of transportation without raising the rates for pensioners (whom are forced into retirement at a certain age and receive next to nothing to live on) and the riot consisted of a couple hundred old timers chanting in front of the mayor’s office. Unofficially, I can see their point because trolley buses marked up their prices 100%, which is pretty absurd.

Today I was called into the governmental building for a meeting about a grant project. That somehow manifested into me giving a presentation to 30 people about business, the American economy, and access to credit. After fifteen minutes I exhausted my Romanian, but was then told that I had the rest of the hour to talk. Good times, I am actually getting quite good at these impromptu “Let’s put this guy on the hot seat in front of a large audience and get him to speak in our language about a subject that is quite difficult to talk about even in his native tongue.” I actually knocked this one out of the park today, if you were gauging from the wow factor, because I tried to convey the importance of debt in business growth and economies to extremely debt-averse people. They probably think credit cards were invented by the devil, but hey who wouldn’t when all bank loans are attached with 30% interest rates.

Alright, so that about does it. I’m off to Milestii Mici for two weeks for more language and technical training. I found out three shocking pieces of news today, the first being that I will be co-writing and translating a 60-70 page grant for economic development in my village that is due 12 days from now, and so far only 7 pages have been written, in Romanian- it must be submitted in English. So not only will I be spending most of my days sitting through language classes that make my brain feel like it’s about to explode, but I will be working while everyone else gets to catch up and hang out. Second little gem of info I received today is that I will no longer be staying with my original host family from this summer. I wasn’t given a reason, and I am pretty upset over this. I’ll hopefully get a bed over the soba, because it is getting quite cold here. And the best for last, tomorrow morning I’m headed out to my host aunt’s house to help her son slaughter a pig. After that we have to chop it up and conserve it for the winter. Hopefully we will get some shashlik tomorrow. I’m on the fence about bringing my camera. TBD.

No new posts will be up until after I finish this grant, so enjoy and please comment at the end of each of these entries. I’m getting tired of reading “0 Comments” every time I log on. Adios amigos.

Ziua Vinului

2009-10-12T06:23:00.000-07:00

Wine festival pictures.

My PST village, Mileștii Mici, had a booth setup for their winery.

Entrance to the festival.

A couple PCVs after a morning race in the park.

Look at me go.

Gathering before the Peace Corps 5k race started.

My host mother has been stashing grapes all over the apartment. This is the top of my dresser in my room where I found a bunch of grapes. The next day I started finding them in drawers, cabinets, and under beds. Strange...

If you have been flowing this blog, you should know that Moldova is notorious for its wine. At least they claim to be famous for it, because before moving here I had never even heard of Moldova, much less Moldovan wine. It has been told to me that during the glory days of the Soviet Union, Moldova was one of the richer Soviet blocks and that officers in the Russian army would vacation here. Let’s not get caught up on the apparent fact that “being a richer” state, technically, doesn’t mesh too well with the whole communist thing. Moldova grows a ton of grapes, more so in the center and south of the country, and the country boasts quite a few wineries. The problem now is that there is no one to sell all of their wine to. Russia was the target market, but because of an embargo that was placed on the wine, the market has deteriorated. It is quite hard to break into the European market because it is flooded with wine from France, Italy, Egypt, Greece, and Spain. Moldova has a little bit of a capital problem; no one is buying their main commodity export, and so the metaphorical well is drying up quite quickly. You can tell that once upon a time this country was productive and industrious, but now it seems that post-Soviet grayness has blanketed the landscape. So what do you do when you are sitting on a gold mine of wine that no one is buying? Throw a wine fest, duh!

This weekend marked the annual Ziua Vinului in Chișinău. It was a two day festival held at an outdoor expo that was hosted by wineries from across the country. Upon entering the main area of the festival, you were immediately surrounded by booths selling frigarui (BBQ), pastries, souveniers, and of course, wine. Free samples were given out, and for those that wanted to really splurge, bottles of wine were two dollars. I was quite impressed with the booths the wineries setup- the facades were beautiful and there was usually an area for tasting/buying wine and also a formal area where the judges would test the wine. On Saturday most of Peace Corps Moldova was there, and it wasn’t too hard to walk fifteen feet and run into someone you know. Getting started at 2pm probably wasn’t the best idea, but we had all just run a 5K race that some of the veteran volunteers hosted, and we were eager to get the party started. The last bit I remember from Saturday night was dancing the hora with a couple thousand exuberantly lubricated Moldovans, eating a hot dog with pickled carrots and mayonnaise on top, getting lost in the woods trying to find the porter potties, and riding one wicked spinner-car-festival ride. Gata.

I somehow ended up back at the festival on Sunday night. Not the brightest idea, and work has been quite miserable today, but all’s fair in the name of integration, right? I have a two week training session coming up this Sunday, and I will try to squeeze in a blog before then about something other than my glutinous weedend-ul la Ziua Vinului. Trebuie sa merg. Hai noroc!

Ranting

2009-10-07T06:16:00.000-07:00

The entrance to my apartment building. Check out the yellow gas line running above the door.

A corn crib with chickens under it near my apartment.

Box of grapes someone gave me for helping in the fields.

Fall colors on my walkabout.

Random well.

I've been naked in this stream.

Arrrrgggg talk about frustrated. I really have no clue what’s going on with my life right now. Moments like this really bring about a bitter voice in the back of my head screaming “Seriously, what are you doing here?” I’m back on that old rickety rollercoaster called Life, where the major catalyst for the change is good ol’ Moldova. This hostility and frustration is probably, if I had to guess, coming from the fact that no one wants to work with me anymore, I have absolutely zero clean clothes, I haven’t showered in a week, we have no water in my apartment, the electricity is out most days, I don’t have the internet anymore and the only way(s) to get it back is to be exploited for mucho dinero (“prea scump” în limba română), my friends in my village left for work or school, it’s cold, dark, and rainy outside, and to top the ice cream sunday off, I shattered my fly swatter rendering me powerless against my new found archenemies.

Wow, it feels good to get that off my chest. Tomorrow is a new day though, and it marks the four months to the day that I have been in Moldova, and it’s also Thursday, my favorite day of the week. I don’t want to come off that I don’t like where I’m at, on the contrary, I just really need to find some work to keep me occupied or else I’ll go crazy. Working in the fields these past weeks, although exhausting, was exhilarating. It felt good to go out and get my hands dirty. It’s a cheap way to gain respect from the people here, and I was able to learn a lot about agriculture practices, connect with people, and get in a workout in the beautiful countryside. It doesn’t hurt that I was always paid handsomely with meals and praise. I’ve actually been offered land, grapes, wine, chickens, rabbits, and daughters. But now the fields are harvested, and the wine is fermenting and we are all hunkering down for the winter. My fellow volunteers, especially the ones from up North, don’t think I’ll survive the winter. During the months of December and January the temperature hovers around -20 Celsius (-4 F), and the buildings here are insulated where in the summer time it’s blazing hot inside, and in the winter, yep, you guessed it, it’s freezing. Right now I’m sitting in my office building wearing a jacket, but I know that I won’t need it when I step outside. Gotta love it.

This past Sunday I went on a walkabout near my village. It was a beautiful fall day and I was in a village called Banești, about 10 kilometers outside of Telenești (I am on my work keyboard so I get to easily use my fancy romanian letters like ă, î, ș, ț, â. Ш сщгдв фдыщ ензу шт кгыышфт ша ш лтуц рщц- I could also type in Russian if I knew how). The pictures I am posting are from that outing. It was funny because I ended up on an hour long skype phone call from my parents while cars and caruțas-horse carts- were going past me asking if I wanted a ride to my village. When I got close to my village, I didn’t feel like going home, so I picked a mountain about 13 kilometers away, and struck out. I didn’t anticipate being exhausted by the time I got there, and my conversion of kilometers to miles is awful and walking 23 kilometers in a day is a lot more than I thought it would be. I gladly accepted on the ride back. As always, thanks for reading and pray that the water is turned back on when I get home, because pretty soon you´ll be able to smell me from America. Peace.

Corn and Grapes

2009-09-23T23:23:00.001-07:00

The forest

Someone sleeps in this little hut in the vineyard to make sure no one steals the grapes.

Beautiful vineyard view

The week’s adventure continues. On Wednesday I helped pick grapes again. Driving out to a little village of 600 people, my friend Ion told me we were going to take the back way, because the main road to get into the village is really bad, and at times almost impassable. Needless to say, the back way was straight up a mountain, on a horrible dirt road filled with potholes and other tire-blowing surprises. When the rain starts, Ion said, the good road turns into a mudslide and people are forced to take the main road into the village, adding an extra two hours onto the trip. Driving on the roads in Louisiana, which as many of you know can be night and day once you cross the border to another state, seem like a dream compared to here. It’s funny because whenever I take the microbus to Chisinau I usually put my earphones in and take a nap, and every time we pass through a town called Orhei I am startled awake by my head getting smashed against the ceiling because of the potholes in the road. How I look at it though is that if they had good roads here, it just wouldn’t be as fun.

Once we reached the top of the mountain the views were fantastic. The countryside here is beautiful. Looking out at the horizon you can see small clusters of houses and trees that make up different villages, vast open grazing lands for the livestock, acres and acres of farm land accented by freshly tilled earth, rows of grapes, or stacks of corn husks made into tee-pees. We made it early in the morning and first had to harvest a couple acres of corn, by hand. Talk about some bad breaking work, you go through the rows of corn, cut the stalk near the ground with a scythe (if you recall from a previous blog post I was having trouble remembering the word for the slasher tool the Grim Reeper uses), and once that is complete you must remove the husk, and then make giant tee-pees with the stalks, which will be picked up by a horse cart to store for winter which feeds the cows. After we finished the corn we took a break and had a picnic of rabbit, tomatoes, bread, and wine in the shade of an apple tree. I don’t think I’m programmed the same way as the Moldovans, because the old grandpa I was working with seemed to be energized by the wine, but all I wanted to do was take a booze-and-fatigued induced nap in the shade. It probably didn’t help matters that I had killed my water three hours earlier and was pushing the dehydration threshold. My logic at that point was to graze freely on the grapes, and hopefully the fructose and water in the fruit would keep me going.

Harvesting grapes and making wine probably is a lot stickier than you would imagine. You start at the end of a row, and use your knife to cut the bushels off the vine. Every time I would start to get in a groove, and felt like I was really making some headway I would slice my hand open with my knife. Once the baskets were full, we would haul them to the van and pile them in the back on top of a large tarp laid down so as not to get the van dirty since at the bottom a nice layer of juice had formed. Bees swarm to the grapes and I’m really surprised only one of us got stung, because driving down the road we were like a mobile beehive. Of course while driving to the village at the end of the day to drop the grapes off to start the wine making process, the van broke down. I’m no mechanic, and my Romanian is pretty rusty, especially when it comes to technical car parts, but I think the problem was the transmission. I was pretty curious to see how we were going to get out of this pickle, but after banging around the engine with a hammer for ten minutes, we were merrily bumping down the road again.

After my friend Ion and I unloaded the grapes, we had to weigh them, and I believe it came to a little over a ton. We thought we were going to bring the harvest back to Telenesti to sell to a man that owns a bar, so we loaded the grapes back into the van. Well, no dice. The guy didn't want the grapes, so once again, we had to scoop out all the grapes (it was getting really sticky by this point), and carry them a couple hundred yards to the back of the house where a giant barrel was waiting for us to deposit the load. I had been going strong for twelve hours at this point, and was releived when the babusca sat us down at the table to eat borsht, eggs, and a tomato salad.

Cool autumn nights during Harvest

2009-09-20T23:54:00.000-07:00

Remember what I have mentioned about unpredictability? This Friday everything seemed to be “normal”. I walked around the village, shot the breeze with a couple people, had a meeting with the director of the school, went to tutoring, and had a nice dinner. After 8 o’clock I’m pretty much in the clear for unexpected adventures, and I like to talk with my host family, read a book, or pop in a movie; I live in a village and the discotech here isn’t really my thing (big room, no bar, big groups of 14 year olds). Anyways, it was about 10 pm, I had just finished going over my day’s language lesson and was looking forward to finishing Vonnegut’s Sirens of Titan. I heard the doorbell ring and could tell right away from the voices that it was my neighbor, Igor the bus driver. I first met him at the funeral party I went to on my site visit to Telenesti. He is a jovial sort of man that loves to ramble away in Russian forgetting that I only know Romanian. He is a classic repeater. Some people here will be talking to you, then when they can see that they’ve lost you, or a word has stumped you, they will try a different approach to the conversation, and hope that you know a synonym of the word they are trying to get across. This seems to be the most practical method, at least for me. However, there are others, the repeaters, that will repeat the word over, and over, and over, hoping that somehow after ten times of hearing the word, the meaning will suddenly make sense to you. The best part is that people won’t simply repeat the word, but they get louder each time. This seems to be a classic universal mistake, and at first it’s frustrating because you want to tell them that you aren’t deaf or stupid, you just haven’t learned the word yet in the four months you’ve been in the country. If I feel the situation at hand is informal enough, I will shout back at them “NU INTELEG ACEEA CUVENT”- I DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT WORD. Works like a charm, and you can see the wheels turning trying to come up with a new way to explain what they are talking about instead of writing you off as the linguistically challenged foreigner. Anyways, old Igor the bus driver, came over to tell me, against my host mothers wishes, that I was to go night fishing with him and his buddy Viscile. I had to get up early the next morning to help a family harvest grapes, but Igor the bus driver wouldn’t have it any other way, we were going fishing.

Twenty minutes later, sitting in the soft mud next to a large pond used to water the local cows, sheep, and goats, we had poles in hand and lines in the water. It’s been quite sometime since I’ve been fresh water fishing, and I was trying to explain that the kind of fishing I do back home is pretty far from what we were doing. Finally after freezing my tail off for about an hour and a half with nothing to show for it except a stomach full of fresh goat cheese and wine, we decided to pack it in. I’m pretty sure there aren’t even fish in the pond, but all in all I really enjoyed the camaraderie of sitting on the bank, listening to stories about Soviet times, and taking in the dark landscape only barely visible from the sliver of the moon peaking through the clouds and the orange glow of Igor the bus driver’s cigarette.

The next morning at 6:45 I was roused out of bed, again by Igor the bus driver. To make up for our fruitless labors the night before he came bearing gift of fish sandwiches. Nothing like waking up to the day with a cup of coffee, and rich, oily canned fish paste spread over a slice of bread. Surprisingly enough, that was the second time in ten days to have fish paste sandwiches for breakfast, and I am really starting to enjoy them.

After a couple hours working my magic with sheers on grape vines, the family I was helping decided to call it a day. I forgot to bring my camera, but I’m sure there will be more photo ops to see me in action, don’t worry. After saying goodbye and promising I would come back to help make wine, I walked to the main road near their farm, and instead of hitching back to my village, I found myself getting on a bus to Chisinau going the opposite direction. My host family would be gone all weekend, and I really didn’t feel like sitting at home by myself. An hour and a half later, after a nice cat nap induced by the warmth of 50 people in roughly the size of a cardboard box with no open windows, I made it into the capital. I picked the right weekend to go in because 3/4ths of PC Moldova was in town for the weekend. I spend the weekend bumping around the big city, grabbing snacks in the piata, enjoying the weather on the terrace of a local bar, and jamming out to a great cover band that our Safety and Security Officer for PC plays the harmonica in. Sunday morning, I was able to lethargically lounge around PC headquaters watching ESPN, trying to find the energy to make it to the auto Gara de Nord (North Bus Station) and head back home. Next weekend I’ll be back in the capital for two days of language lessons, and soon it will be Wine Fest in October kicked off with a 10K road race that I’m looking forward to. In the mean time, I’ve got a case of the Monday’s and I really need to get up and go to work. Multi ani si success aceasta saptamâna, paka paka.

Living Rural: 101 Days

2009-09-16T11:03:00.000-07:00

At an old Jewish cemetery helping to clean it up.

Selling produce in the Sunday morning market.

I’m having a hard time starting this blog post. It’s not that I haven’t been doing anything, quite on the contrary, I have been very busy, yet mildly productive. Actually, I’m not really sure what “productive” means right now. America is a society based upon results, of action, and much of what inspired me to come to the Peace Corps is from hearing about previous success stories (go check out Peace Corps website and you’ll see what I mean, I’m pretty sure I decided that I wanted to join whenever I read the entire site on my iPhone driving back from a fishing trip). What they didn’t tell me is that productivity can be very strange; I know now that by simply being in my village and showing the people that I am dedicated to living here by learning their language, making friends, going to work, and living like they do is productive, but whenever your used to “doing” something, and able to see tangible outputs, it makes me stir crazy to get a project going. I’ve actually got a couple projects floating around in the old steal trap that I want to get started with, but I still have a good amount of prep work before I can start getting my hands dirty. A friend of mine in the village bought a really nice sewing machine, and he and his wife want to start a sewing business. It’s ironic because I had just heard what another PCV did earlier in another site where he and his partner helped setup a sewing business, geared more for tailoring. The guy in my village wants to make embroideries and sell them in a local/regional market. We also collaborated on the possibilities of getting more sewing machines, and renting them out Internet café style per hour. The idea is in very early stages, but there is promise. I told him that my mother owns her own needlepoint shop, and the guy almost fell out of his chair thinking that I was God’s personal gift to him. In the grand scheme of things that doesn’t mean squat, but I don’t want to deflate the wind out of my own sails and am really eager to work with this couple.

I also have a couple Ag specific projects that I’ve been thinking about. I’m more drawn to projects in the agriculture sector here. Call me crazy, but there is something romantic in working the land, helping to refine a practice that has been around for thousands of years, and literally is, our life source. There’s a lot of need for improving greenhouses here, and other volunteers have really sparked my interest in solar battery powered greenhouses where the sun heats up barrels of water and regulates the temperature in the winter time, making it much more cost efficient than burning fuel in a heat source. I’m not sure how enthused farmers would be about portable greenhouses, but I think it’s a pretty cool concept. Essentially, you can plant, for example lettuce, earlier than most crops because they are more resilient to cold weather; once these have started to grow, you get your tractor and pull your greenhouse (usually on rails or something similar) to another plot where you are starting the next type of crop, and so forth until all the crops don’t need a greenhouse anymore. The next project is a dreamer, and is simply an idea, but if someone would build a produce refrigeration unit in my raoin, the farmers could store their produce longer and market them in the winter. As for now, there isn’t any option for locally grown produce in the winter, and the fresh produce they can get is expensive. I might just want to see this project go through because the thought of canned watermelon (no joke, I’ll tell you how it tastes in a couple months) really turns my stomach. And last, but definitely not the least, I would like to introduce sweet potatoes to Moldovans. It’s one of those “If you build it, they will come” type of deals, because the Moldovans go crazy over their potatoes. I had potatoes at all three meals today. They can be baked, boiled, smashed, diced, roasted, or toasted and they will eat them. Not only does the nutritional content of sweet potatoes blow the hell out of regular potatoes, but they taste better too (please refer to my disclaimer on the right-hand side of my blog about my opinions). I’m pretty certain that if they will accept the fact that the inside of the potato is orange, they will love them, and I will be given my own holiday in Moldova, and statues of Lenin, as you see blow, will be taken down and replaced by me. A guy can dream…

Sunday morning market in Cortova, that really is a statue of Lenin in the background.

This past weekend I went up to visit another volunteer that lives near the border of Ukraine. He had a project that involved cleaning up an old Jewish cemetery that he needed help with. It was a great weekend, and it was really nice to be able to see my fellow PCVs in action. Talk about some impressive language abilities, these guys have been in site for 18 months and were rattling off Romanian and Moldovaneasca (blend of Romanian and Russian) like it was nothing. Needless to say, I’m quite jealous. I had an epiphany while there when we were walking to the morning market trying to buy some snacks for later in the day, and somehow ended up in someone’s car, where we were then shown the corn meal factory, ended up in the fields supervising a boy learn how to prune raspberry plants, and then were deposited at a table where we ate bread, cheese, and pig fat washed down with homemade wine. I love the unpredictability of my days here. Time is quite an irrelevant concept, and if you go with the flow, it is truly amazing where you will end up at the end of the day. I actually experienced that quite literally last Monday when my partner told me we were going to a masa (like a party) at this family’s house in another village. After we ate, my partner and I said our goodbyes, and we were preparing to leave when he told me that I would be staying with that family for the next two days. No extra clothes, toothbrush, phone charger, or whatever other convenience I usually would bring on a similar outing. I spent the next two days wandering around the farm, learning how to milk a cow, harvest grapes, and watching the grass grow, and the best part of it, I loved every second of it. Since then I’ve been daydreaming of the day I can move out of my host family’s apartment, rent out a little cottage with a nice fruit and vegetable garden, and even have some chickens, ducks, and rabbits. Before I get distracted and go into detail, I will end it there because I feel like I’ve hit you with a lot of agriculture related material today. Although before I do go, I must say that the news that’s coming out of America is quite repulsive. It’s either someone screaming at the president in Congress, a popstar dying or being defamed, or a bloody mess with healthcare reform, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be hanging up to towel on my news sites and simply “be” for awhile, so hopefully by the time I get back the economy will be in full swing, healthcare will be affordable for all, and the south is no longer in racist-shock that there is a black president. Have fun sorting out that mess, I'm sticking to language lessons.

Language lessons

Muddy fields and horse carts

2009-09-07T10:33:00.000-07:00

This is a monument in my village for a famous Moldovan poet.

Noroc my faithful readership. From my daily news readings it sounds like things are really heating up over there in the States. I would like to thank the person that signed me up for the daily conservative newsletters; the only thing better would be a Rush Limbaugh podcast or reruns of Bill O’Reily. Sadly enough, I don’t get much of a chance to read the newsletters before my cursor finds its way to the Delete button. Now if I could only figure out how to block obnoxious forwarded emails from friends and acquaintances. Who in their right mind likes receiving those? Even more, who in their right mind likes sending those? I won’t divulge further into this caveat, for your sake, but just stop and think next time before you hit the Forward button on those pointless emails.

The political situation in Moldova is fascinating and I’ve settled into a nice routine of printing out the latest political news here and translating them into English. The struggle between the Communists and the Democrats to elect a president still continues, even after three subsequent elections.

Last week was a great week. It was the first week where I really started to feel comfortable with the notion that this village is my home for the next 20-someodd months. I’m not doing much at work besides showing up, translating articles and books, reading, and doing my song-and-dance whenever people wander in and want to talk with me. There are reoccurring questions that I get without fail: “How do you like Moldova?; “What is better, America or Moldova?”; “What do you think of our women?”; “Do you live near New York or California?”; and “What do you think about Obama?”. I don’t care one way or another what your political leanings are, it’s nice to travel when other countries like your president and you aren’t ostracized for having an American passport.

I’ve made friends with a family in my village with four kids whom all speak very good English. They learned English from a PCV nine years ago that spent three years in my village. It’s fascinating listening to them talk about the PCV and how much he has helped change their lives. Not only did he teach them a valuable skill that helped get them a better education in Romania, but he also showed them a new perspective of the world. PCVs in over 100 countries are teaching people the value of having an open mind. I didn’t want to start an English club before coming to my village because I don’t know the first thing about teaching a foreign language. But I’ve changed my mind, and have found five kids that are very eager to work with me, and if the only thing I do here for the next two years is teach them English, I know this impact will go far beyond the scope of my time here. People are looking for a way out of poverty in Moldova, and their best chances to do this is to get a good education. The future truly lies in the hands of the youth, and if they can get a good education and put it into practice here in Moldova, the country will have a much brighter future. It is humbling to know that I can be a part of this, even on the grassroots level, and there is no greater feeling than that of helping people and making a difference. It is a privilege to call this my job, and I know that these experiences will mold me for the rest of my life.

Apart from starting an English club, I helped with a leadership conference for high schoolers this past Saturday. Thirty students attended and listened to speakers (a mayor, auditor, journalist, economist, teacher, and a police officer) talk about their jobs and qualifications. After that, the kids learned how to assemble a CV and a resume, and then they had two sessions on Pro-activity and Leadership. I guided a group of students on the Delegation style of leadership. The kids’ conception of delegation was that the boss simply hands out work and tells people what to do. We did different skits and situations to show them that an effective leader is one that utilizes the assets of his/her employees. I wanted to show them that you don’t have to be the smartest person, or the most talented, to be an effective leader. All the students seemed to have a good time, and I learned just as much as they did, and I look forward to putting on more informational sessions similar to this one.

This is a group of students that I was leading on Leadership styles...in Romanian.

This is a group shot of the professionals we had come speak for the kids at the conference.

Last week I was able to get a tutor for Romanian, no thanks to my partner or my host family. I was getting tired, annoyed is a better word, of “bride shopping” as my partner put it. I threw him a curve ball the other day just to see what his reaction would be, and I told him that I wanted to get a guy to tutor me because we would have more in common. That was when he stopped “helping” me find a tutor; probably for the best because my patience was starting to wear thin. Along with a tutor, I was also able to find a workout partner. I was getting really worried what kind of physical activity I would be able to do during the winter because the snow, mud, ice, and weather are supposed to make it difficult to run through the fields. I met a police officer that said I could work out with him at the police gym since there’s no other gym in my village. A couple free weights and a bar, and I’m a happy camper. In the mean time, I’ve made more Moldovan friends, and we play basketball a couple times a week. Which ever previous volunteer that was here that played basketball in college, thank you for very much for making me look like a horrible basketball player. The guys matched me against a 6’7 giant that is an incredible player, thinking that all Americans are really good at the sport (because of that other volunteer). The guy ran me into the ground the first day, but I’ve been able to hold my weight for the most part since then. It’s just fun getting out with the locals and playing.

This is a wedding driving through my village. They decorate the cars and honk all the way down the street.

I haven’t attended any more funerals, thank God, but I did get invited to a wedding in a couple weeks. From what I’ve heard, weddings here are sundown to sunup celebrations, full of dancing, food, and many, many rounds of toasting the firewater. I’m a little nervous because there is no telling how this is going to turn out. The two other big celebrations I’ve been to landed me in the hospital and naked in a polluted river (separate occasions with no connection to each other). So we shall see… Tune in next week for more stories and soliloquies, until then Geaux Tigers and happy Labor Day!

This little house is a Crochet and stitching shop in my village.

One of the many horse carts, called a caruta.

A couple kiosks near my work, I love the one called "Lactate" on the left.

In the background is my apartment building, and the foreground is an abandoned Orthodox Church and someone's horse grazing on the side of the road.

My buddy Dave in Balti reading what this monument says in Russian. Apparently it is a monument for Chernobyl.

Ziua Limba

2009-08-31T11:49:00.000-07:00

When I say I have free time, I'm not being facetious, I really have nothing better to do than play around with PhotoBooth on my computerI used to have a reoccurring dream that I was a Siamese twin. I don't think it would be that bad...
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Happy holidays to everyone reading this, be it a Kyrgyzstani celebrating your Independence Day from the USSR, a Malaysian celebrating Merdeka Day, or a Moldovan celebrating National Language Day. August 31 here is the national holiday when Moldova switched over from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin alphabet. Besides an all day concert going down in Chisinau, I’m not sure what the Moldovans are doing to celebrate. I spent the day recuperating from the four previous days of feasting, celebrating, and being gluttonous. I’ll go over some highlights mai tirzui, or “more later” for you Romanian challenged folks. I first want to start of this blog wishing students everywhere good luck with your semesters. It feels really strange for me not to be gearing up for classes, doing last minute scheduling changes, and getting psyched for football season.

Life here is going, for the most part, well. I have settled in nicely with my new host family. I thought it was going to be a difficult adjustment going from my PST host family with lots of kids around, to it simply being my new host mom and sister in Telenesti, but there is always extended family coming over and lots of surprise, at least for me, parties that my h. mom throws. The food here is pretty good, nothing fancy, lots of salami, potatoes, soup, bread, cheese, and cabbage, but I’m not hard to please and I’m sticking to my guns that I’ll try anything once (The PC medical office would probably cringe to hear me say that, sorry Illiana). Work has been a tad stagnant lately, and since my partner is having back problems I have been opening and closing the office. Remember the guy that came in a week or two ago that wanted to immigrate to Canada? Well he’s back, except this time he doesn’t have any forms for me to fill out. He is about 65 years old, skinny as a rail, and has a big, dark mustache, and the most important detail as of lately, shirtless. This dude is priceless. He comes barging up into my office wearing the biggest grin on his face and trousers up to his belly button, and shakes my hand. Before I could even ask why he wasn't wearing a shirt, he goes off into this whole spiel about how the floor that our offices are located on is a furnace in the summer, and a refrigerator in the winter. I’ve gotten used to his lack of attire now seeing that he has done this three or four times, and am becoming immune to the fact that I have a shirtless old man chilling in the chair pulled up to my desk either talking to me, or if I’m busy, reading a pamphlet about agriculture or economic development. Truth be told, I’m a little jealous, because it can get a little hot up there. Soon enough though I’ll be freezing my you-know-whats off dreaming of the warm, sunny days of August.

Tomorrow I go back to work, but like I said I have had the previous four days off, as well as today, so a nice five day stretch without seeing my scrawny-shirtless friend at the office (Picture the naked guy in the movie Waking Ned Divine, now put a black mustache on him, BINGO), anyways I’ll move off him and recount my holidays. Thursday was Moldova’s Independence Day. I knew that they gained their independence from the USSR in 1991, but whenever you have a limited vocabulary in a foreign language you take what you can get, so I asked multiple people about the holiday. I was pretty shocked that some gave me the wrong years- 1990, 1992, and one guy even told me they were celebrating their independence from Germany in 1945. Riiiggghhhtttt. There wasn’t much going on that day in the village, my host mother told me that there was a celebration in the center at 10am, and I made it down there for 10:20, which should have been either right on time here, or still early. Either the celebration never happened, or by an act of God it had occurred on time because I didn’t see any celebration, but I’m putting my money on the former because 20 minutes seems like a really short time to celebrate Independence Day.

Friday was, from what I gather, the closest thing to the birthday of the village. I knew we were going to be going down to the center for a concert that started at 9pm (in reality it was kicked off at 10:30). I was trying to get a nap in so I would be well rested for the festivities when my host mom knocked on my bedroom door around 2:30 and asked if she could put a table in my room. I thought she was just rearranging, nothing new because she has been cleaning and rearranging like a madwoman for days now (In retrospect I should have picked up on this foreshadowing because what does it mean when people get their houses clean as whistle?…Company). No sooner than she had deposited a table in my bedroom, I was seated at it with 15 guests staring at me probably wondering why I looked like I had just rolled out of bed. You know how your brain doesn’t function immediately after a nice slumber? I was doing my best at small talk, but the words just weren’t coming to me. It was a pretty awkward situation. But after seven and a half hours of eating and drinking, I was back to fine form. Actually we all were, you should have seen us all trying to make our way down to the center for the concert, it was a train wreck. The concert was held in front of my office building, and before the show got kicked off we went inside because my h. mom had to use the internet. The next thing I know, eight girls ranging in ages from 16 to 25 came barging in the office and start changing clothes. It was like Christmas came early, but before I could appreciate my surroundings, two guys came in and started talking to me about the girls and how they were the bands that were performing tonight. My American status definitely scored some celebrity points, and I was able to take in a lot of the concert backstage with the performers, mayor, and other VIPs-yeah, that’s how I roll. After the concert ended somewhere between 12 and 1, the girls wanted to know what I thought, if they would do well in America, if I wanted to go out and celebrate with them, etc. The 16 year olds, god this sounds awful, were really hott, but it weirded me out that their entire concert was a striptease and I’m sure many guys that night went to sleep with really impure, improper, and illegal thoughts conjured up from the temptresses tweens. I’m not sure mainstream America is quite ready for them. Give it two years and they’ll be breaking the hearts of every pimple-faced American boy.

This is a disclaimer for my mother. I know you internalize my struggles here, and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your willingness to hear out my problems, and try to be there for me. However, I know that you can get worked up over some of the events and emotions going on with me right now, so you can either skip to the paragraph below this one, or you can read on, just understand that I’m having the time of my life right now, no matter all the ups and downs that come along with it. With that being said, I took a day trip to visit friends in the 2nd largest city in Moldova, Balti. I somehow managed to make it out of bed for 7 the morning after the concert and on a bus 30 minutes later for the hour ride north. It was really nice getting to see friends and we ran into several other PCVs. Balti is a really nice city, except they only speak Russian there so it was fun making my friend Dave order for me at restaurants (although slightly emasculating, but I was really impressed with his Russian skills). I ended up taking an “illegal” bus back at the end of the day. These are the vans that are parked kind of close to the bus station that are direct routes straight to Chisinau, and are considered illegal because they aren’t state owned and don’t pay the $5 entrance fee to get into the bus station. I’m pretty sure the mafia has this market cornered. I asked the driver how much it was to go only half the distance to Chisinau, dropping me off on the side of the highway in a village about ten miles from mine, since my village isn’t on the route. I could have sworn he said 15 lei, and considering that it cost me 20 lei to go from my village to Balti, I thought that was fair. Half way into the trip, one of the mafia minions started collecting the money, and that’s when I started running into problems. Instead of it being 15 lei, it was really 50 lei, and of course, I only had 30 some odd lei on me. Man! I hate getting yelled at in Russian and was pretty sure they were going to kick me out of the van right then and there in the middle of nowhere. But for some reason, the gods smiled down upon me and they didn’t kick me out, I was just yelled at in a strange language and given dirty looks for the rest of the trip. Once we got to the village I needed to get dropped off at, the crony collecting the money let me out, gave me some lovely parting obscenities detailing how I need to go back to America, and planted a fist firmly in my stomach. It’s a strange feeling to be doubled over trying to catch your breath on the side of a highway, in the pitch dark, nowhere close to your own village, with no money, in a foreign country. I had the choice of either walking back and arriving home around 5am, or try hitching it back with no money. The way it works here is that you give the same amount of money to the driver willing to pick you up, as you would have spent for a bus or rutiera. So to keep a short story short, I found a ride after only thirty minutes of waiting, and luckily the guys were very hospitable and said they wouldn’t have accepted money even if I had any.

Yesterday I thought I would be lounging and was really appreciating the fact that I was in bed at 10:30 in the morning drinking a cup of coffee and reading a book. That didn’t last long though and after an hour or so my phone started ringing and I was off to meet up with another PCV that lives in a village not too far from mine who was in my village for the day. I had never met her and she has been here for 18 months so I wanted to see what she thought about our raoin. The next thing I know I’m sitting at an internet café with the PCV and two Moldovans helping to plan a leadership conference for high schoolers this up coming Saturday. I’m not opposed to helping out because I really want to, I’m just afraid that me leading one of the groups will take away from the kids’ experience because I don’t feel fully capable with the language yet. We’ll see how it goes….

After that I made it home, and again wasn’t informed that we were having guests, and that we would be making a party in my room. I don't really mind that we have it thre, and it makes sense because I have by far the biggest room in the apartment. I just wish I had some kind of warning for these events. All in all it was a lot of fun, and it was kept really informal. One of the lady consultants that I work with at ACSA came over with her 20-year-old daughter, and we ate, drank, and talked for a good couple of hours. The lady I work with and my h. mom got pretty giggly by the end, and some of the stuff they were saying was cracking me up (If anyone wants to marry at 55 year old Moldovan woman, who has the heart of gold, and the teeth to match it, let me know). It was also nice to get to interact with a Moldovan around my age, and even though she was making fun of me most of the time about, well, everything, it was still nice to get to hang out.

September is almost upon us, and today is the first day I sought out a pair of sweatpants to wear around the crib. Its nicely chilly at night and in the morning, but I know that with this weather also comes rain. I’ve been dreading the winter, but I’ve always liked fall in the past so we’ll see what’s it’s like here. I’ll leave you all with a quote that I like about this time of the year, and it does a nice job describing my village.

“The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.”
-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Layed up in bed with my first Moldovan cold

2009-08-20T02:37:00.000-07:00

Yours truly infront of the Catholic church in Orhei.
We had to walk around the church a couple times listening the priests say prayers.
Leading the group.

This chair signified something important in a museum, I just don't remember what, sorry.

My kitchen.
Main road in Ialoveni.
Wine factory in Ialoveni. You could fill up a one liter bottle full of wine for a dollar.
My view from my window. I live in a building that looks exactly the same.

Salut. I'm starting this blog off at the office this morning. Yes, I know I should be working and not surfing the web, but if you consider what I actually do here on a daily basis, this is being productive. This is only due to the fact that I am still very new to my community, and I still haven't gotten the language under my belt. My first week of work I only had to go into the office for three days. The first day I sat at my desk, studied limba romana, and read a book. The next day my ag extension office put on a seminar for apiculture. It was a great seminar, set in amongst apple trees and boxes of bees. We had a feast for lunch, and took the afternoon off. The next two days my partner went to Chisinau so I bummed around my village, studied, and read. Then Friday comes, I'm at work for 30 minutes and my partner tells me he has to go to the hospital and I need to lock up at 5. To tell you the truth, I was fine flying solo, except when the phone would ring. I don't think I got one message right. My partner should have known that was inevitable. That was also the day I ran an immigration office for Quebec. I might have mentioned that in my earlier blog post.

This week has shown a little more promise. Monday we were running spreadsheets in Excel and I was told to brace myself, that it was going to be a long couple of days. I finished them all in four hours. My partner was so stunned that he gave me the biggest gold-toothed smile and a bear hug. After that we celebrated over a beer at lunch, and I was then informed that since all the work was complete I didn't have to go to work the next day. Usually this would be music to my ears, but if you would understand the boredom that off days bring, you would want to be at work yourself.

This sounds all gravy in black and white. But really, since moving into my new site, my head has been all out of sorts. It is slowly getting better though. I attribute this to the fact that I only understand about 10% of, well, everything. It is a very humbling experience, and it leaves no room for ego. So now I'm back to peaks and valleys. I've extended my running a considerable amount, and am now hitting the trails for about an hour and a half every other day. These are the days I look forward to the most. The runs help me put things into perspective; two years has the perception of a long time, but one step at a time, one day at a time, perseverance is inevitable.

These runs also help me sleep at night, because man, do I have a dog problem. Sorry Mom and Dad, but I'm going to have to call you out on this one. You think you have a problem getting a goodnights rest when your neighbor's dog likes to bark all night? Multiply that noise by 50 more dogs, barking, howling, snarling, and fighting, all night, every night. Stray dogs are everywhere here. A friend of mine and I were going to take pictures of them and start a fauxblog called "Adopt a Dog". However, I can't bring myself to do this anymore, because I can't stand the sight of dogs. They really need to implement an extermination program here. I'm sure PETA is ready to crucify me for that comment, and in anticipation of that I say "F---You. Come spend one night here and you will empathize with me." I'm all about saving the whales and believe in animal rights, but when I can't walk down the street without at least one dog sizing me up and trying to bite me, that's when I say there is a problem. It's odd, though, that the most vicious of them all are the little dogs (I've always been a fan of big dogs, having owned several of them, I know they're rowdy and energetic, but what's the point of a little one? Just get a cat, much quieter). I've got a feeling that one of these little yippers will be getting a booting if they don't watch out.

Saturday I went with journalist friend to a town an hour away for the one year birthday of a Catholic church. It was a beautiful service that lasted for two hours and was given in Romanian, Russian, and Italian. I was forced into communion, my first time for a Catholic mass. A) I'm not Catholic and B) I'm not even baptized. I don't have a disposition with the fact that I let a spongy, tasteless wafer dissolve on my tongue, because in my eyes it was just another experience, but I realize that this is probably taboo for Catholics; Get over it, I feel that dedicating two years of my life towards volunteering and helping others off-sets the opinion that I'm going to hell.

After the service we had a feast next door, and I had to privilege of dinning with the holy men- the head of the Moldovan Catholic Church, two priests from Italy, an Orthodox priest, and two Moldovan priests. Let me just say, these guys know how to drink. After four courses of food, many shots of wine, whiskey, and cognac, I was feeling good (I abstained from a good amount of the debauchery rounds too), and ready for a nap. In true Moldovan fashion, I dug deep, tapped into energy reserves, and hitchhiked home.

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Further evidence that I am no longer in America:
1) Today I woke up with a sore throat. It happens right? Well my host mother is a social worker/nurse, and her medical opinion is that I'm sick because I drink cold water. I told her I didn't think that was the reason, because I've been drinking cold water my entire life, most of the time with ice. She responded "I don't drink cold water and I don't have a sore throat." Statements like that remind me of the LSAT....

2) At restaurants and in every ones houses there is a bowl of salt, no salt shaker. When you want salt, you lick your fork, dip it in the bowl, and then eat your food. I don't eat salt here. Also, at restaurants there is usually a half eaten hot pepper in the bowl of salt. If you want to soak it in your soup, by all means, go ahead. If you want to take a bite out of it, that works as well, they simply put it back in the bowl of salt, leaving it for the next customers. I don't eat the peppers here either.

3) I told my partner I need a tutor, he told me I need a woman. After lunch he paraded me around town trying to find me one. I told my host mother about this, and she replied that he is crazy and I shouldn't listen to his nonsense, but I do need to start thinking about marriage, to either a Moldovan or American. Do you see what kind of pressure I'm under?

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As I've mentioned, I run a good bit here. I don't know what I'm going to do during the winter since there will be several feet of snow and mud on the ground. But for now I am the village idiot, and get the Moldovan stink eye every time I pass someone running. My host mother finally asked me why I waste my time running. Knowing how much the Moldovans appreciate competition, I told her I am training for a race, and that seemed to satisfy her. So with that I committed myself to running the Athens Classic Marathon in Greece next November. If any of you want to join in on the fun by running or simply being there for moral support that would be fantastic.

I see hurricanes are starting to brew in the Caribbean. My door is open to any evacuees, I assure you I can show you a good time here. La revedere!

Hot dogs and congealed chicken feet

2009-08-13T09:05:00.001-07:00

There is construction on the other room in my apartment, so this is what I moved into. Getting ready to dance.
My former host sister.
The building I now work at.
Random path I decided to start my hike on yesterday.

August 9, 2009
What do you get when you add eight weeks of stress, awkwardness, wine, sweat, sour cream, Romanian, and lots of fruit together?....A Peace Corps Volunteer. Yes, that’s right, no longer am I mere trainee. At 10:30 this morning, I took the official United States governmental oath to defend my country against all foreign and domestic threats and promised to uphold the Constitution to the best of my abilities, or something along those lines. If only I had a metal coat hanger, I would discombobulate it into a PC logo, and brand it on my right butt check. Just kidding, the medical officer here would freak out if she found out, so no worries.

This past week has been an absolute whirlwind. It seemed like the last week in classes I actually digressed in my language abilities, which sad to say, doesn’t call for one happy camper when you have to sit through hours of lecture everyday. At least I wasn’t in the sinking ship alone. A lot of my other comrades felt like they were in the same situation. But, it’s all over now and I can say that I am stronger because of it.

I’ll miss PST, well no, scratch that I’m lying; I’ll miss parts of PST. I’ll miss getting to see friends everyday, the beautiful village of Milestii Mici, the proximity to the capital, my host family and neighbors, and my professors. I’ll especially miss the random health advisories about the dangers of drinking water from one of my teachers. Anytime I would pour a glass of water this lady would tell me to wait a little bit, that I shouldn’t drink water now, it’s not good for my health. Albeit, “It’s to early in the morning”, “It’s too hot outside, you don’t want to sweat too much”, “You just ate cucumbers, wait a little while to drink water”, “My son plays outside in the sun, and if he drinks water when he comes inside he gets a headache”, and many, many more. I think Moldovans are just adverse to drinking water in general. For some reason I would even take heat from my host mother about this as well. “Neal, we’re about to drink champagne, its not good to drink water”, “Why do you want to drink water right now? It’s not good to drink water before bed” even though my five year old host sister sat there and drained, I kid you not, 3/4th of a quart of chefir- it’s similar to buttermilk, but chunky and they put salt in it, at 11 o’clock at night. I’m pretty sure this is a commonality in Moldova about water, because my new host mother even thinks I’m crazy for wanting to put water in the refrigerator, “You want cold water? Why? It will only make you sick”. Although it’s completely normal to try to get their American to drink wine at 7:45 in the morning before they move out. Nu e nimic, tot e bine, nu asa?

When I went on a site visit to my permanent site visit a month ago my host partner was out of town. Hmm, let me rewind a bit to explain what a host partner is first. Peace Corps wants all our projects here to be sustainable, because, our goal is to help develop human capital. To do this, we all (Health, English, ARBD, and COD) get host partners that are host country nations that work side by side with us in our respective NGO’s, schools, offices, etc. I think a lot a people have a misconception about developing countries…I am not here to come in a point out all the problems I see with their village and/or country, that would never be sustainable. My job is to work with my host partner, first and foremost learn from him/her and then we go about collaborating with the community about what their needs and wants are.
Getting back on track, I met my partner, and man is he a cool guy, very friendly and warm. He seems like a real shaker and a mover, because we got to discussing the projects he has underway, what they’ve done in the past, and why he requested to have a volunteer. From the sound of it, we have the potential to do great things in the way of agriculture projects and economic development.

The pictures I am posting are from our last day in our village. The ARBDs and the CODs get sworn in two weeks early and we had to put together presentations, learn songs and dances, and one person from each group had to give a goodbye/thank you speech to our host families. I worked on a presentation with my friend Vince about the problems Milestii Mici has with foxes. Many a night, my host family would chase a rogue fox, trying to steal one of our ducks, chickens, or rabbits, out of our yard. We actually put together a really nice presentation on all the different prevention methods that people use around the world, but somehow in the delivery of the speech we screwed it up and all the Moldovans thought we were talking about how the poor foxes are being discriminated. I was the one from ARBD to give the speech in Romanian thanking the host families for their hospitality and generosity. I volunteered for the position, because for some reason I love the thrill and nervousness I get when public speaking. I understand why it’s a fear for people to get in-front of a crowd and deliver a speech, but I’ve found that if you embrace that fear, it can be quite a rush. I know, I’m weird, but the challenge of preparing and presenting a speech in a foreign language was too much to pass up.

August 13, 2009
I could have sworn I posted the earlier entry until I got an email today saying that I haven’t updated my blog in awhile. My bad. I don’t want to say I’ve been too busy to post, because that would be a lie. I’ve just not gotten around to it lately is more of an acceptable excuse. I attribute this to the fact that the initial culture shock is wearing off, good sign. However I do have some good updates of what has been going on.

I’ve been at my new site now for a good part of a week, and I’ve only gone to work for a day and a half. Monday was the first day at the office. Most of the day I spent reading a book and working on Romanian, and throughout the day people would wander in, talk with my host partner, and then ask me if I knew the volunteer that was here last year, named Danny or Donny, which they pronounce Joy, don’t ask. That was news to me, I had been told the last volunteer at my site had been an English teacher back in the ‘90s. Now, if my Romanian servers correct, this cat Donny couldn’t handle the Moldovan nectar and would apparently start sippin’ grandpa’s cough syrup before he even made it to lunch, and was kicked out of the PC. What blows my mind is that you have got to be hitting the bottle pretty f-ing hard if Moldovans start thinking you have a drinking problem. Because while I was getting told this story, and warned not to drink very much, my host partner was serving us beer, at work, at 11:30 in the morning. Not only that, but the next day my firm conducted a seminar about apiculture. After the seminar ended, me and six Moldovan farmers went to one of their houses and proceeded to eat probably five chickens, three loafs of bread, a school of fish, half a cow, two watermelons, and drained it all down with about 5 bottles of wine. Needless to say, everyone took the afternoon off. I took a nice four-hour power nap and still had to go to bed at 10 that night.

For the past two days my host partner has been in Chisinau and I haven’t had to work. Yesterday I read a book and a half, watched a movie, took a three-hour walk through the town and surrounding areas, caught a nap, knocked out some studying, and then had dinner. After dinner my host mother showed me food in the fridge, told me it was my breakfast, and told me to lock the door behind her. Okkkaayy, goodnight? I was just about to settle into my book around 10pm when I get a call on my cell phone from my host mother. “Nehlo, vini aklfaklfaskfjdsakafkjasbfasf”, I didn’t understand one word she said. “Bine, la revedere!”- Ok, goodbye! was my response. Thinking that did the trick, I was disrupted 15 minutes later by the doorbell ringing. I threw on some workout shorts and a shirt, and was greeted by the fattest, sweatiest man (shirtless, wearing tiny shorts that disappeared under his bulging stomach) I think I’ve ever encountered in my life. He said something about my host mom, said that his car was downstairs, so I figured what the hell, let’s see where this goes.

Thirty minutes later, after driving through the dark, past any sign of civilization, we pulled off the road to a lone house and was greeted by strangers I’ve never met before. Thoroughly confused, I introduced myself, came inside, and was relieved to see my host mother and sister at the table. It was a terribly strange evening, the father of the family left when I got there and was headed to Moscow, and for the rest of the night the family and I kicked it in one of the bedrooms eating fruit and listening to Moldovan pop music. Around 11:30 they asked if I was tired and then showed me a bed. All right, the night was already weird enough, but since I didn’t have a choice, or the vocabulary, I went along with it. I got up at 7 knowing that my host mom had to be at work by 8, but was sent back to bed. So I got up again at 9:30, ate a breakfast of bread, hot dogs, and congealed chicken feet, and was told that my host mom and sister left an hour before. Not knowing what they had in store for me, I was doing a fine job at asking a bunch of worthless questions and doing my best to understand what they were telling me. This story is really starting to ramble, and the stool I’m sitting on sucks, so I’m going to skip ahead a couple hours. I was asked to look over a loan application, I told them I couldn’t read it, and once I was deemed useless the older brother and myself set off back to my town.

There isn’t a bus that far out, so we had to hitchhike. An old man, with a young woman and her two kids picked us up after ten minutes on the side of the road. Did that old man know how to feed some speed to his ride. At one point, we were doing 70 mph down a dirt road, and doing a great job scaring the shit out of the American in the car. We started swerving all over the road, and then came to a fairly abrupt halt, great, flat tire in the middle of nowhere. We get out to see what happened, and I made it out of the car just in time to see one of the back tires rolling down the hill. It was quite a sight to see this old man sprinting down a hill, leaving his, I presume, daughter and grandkids in his beat up Russian clunker of a car, with three wheels. The guy I was with simply turned, and said “Ha diem” Let’s go.

Dusk

2009-07-30T11:51:00.000-07:00

The cool night air bellows through the lace curtains in my room. It’s a whisper in my ear, taunting me to put down my books and come outside. I put on my brown, J Crew flip-flops that now show signs of the summer rainstorms that can creep up without warning here. With a low, scraping bang, I close the green metal gate with faint white flowers painted on the front, rusted from several years gone unnoticed by a paintbrush The crushed limestone path forks, leaving me with the decision to turn towards the main road leading towards the village on my right, or into the pinkish-purple glow of the sunset over the vineyards, orchards, and fields to my left. It’s an easy decision to make, and soon I find myself walking past the last few houses on the periphery of the neighborhood. These are the gray, towering giants that sit in limbo, half-finished, waiting for their owners to return from abroad with money for materials to commence their constructions. At first glance they look like an elephant graveyard, ruins from more a prosperous time; some show the signs of many harsh winters- unoccupied, and unkempt. Past the last of the houses, the road turns into a dirt path that is well worn from the famers on their tractors that tend to this land. After a twenty-minute walk, savoring the last bit of soft, hazy sunlight, I find a small dirt mound that overlooks the valley. This is the perfect spot to sit, reflect upon my inner most thoughts, and listen to the roar of the country-side silence; dogs are barking, an occasional truck rattles down the road, wind rustles through the grape vines and corn husks. I can’t help but feel like I was intentionally put here, at this exact moment, for a reason that I am yet to discover. Out in the fields, life makes sense; I am able to recharge my batteries, preparing myself for tomorrow’s battles, while releasing the stress inflicted from today’s blows. By the time the sun has set, clouds have rolled in and my skin gets damp from the evening dew. I feel like I am one step closer to piecing together the puzzle of my time here. This, I am sure, will be a puzzle that will take many years to figure out, but I am ready for the challenge, and feel as though there is no mountain too large to move.