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Where is Moldova, anyway?

Musings on my Peace Corps experience in this small, Eastern European, Republic.
 

more pics, i hope!

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Again, if you click the pictures, they will enlarge!







A glimpse into my life. Here, you see my bathroom. It is outside, around the corner, through the chicken coup and next to the corn. It's really not that bad, I just thought an actual picture of my hole in the ground (in an outdoors closet) would help let you understand.


















A few of the volunteers with a statue that is being purposely preserved from Soviet times. Look closer.





















A display of wine outside the wine factory. Fancy, huh? That is this thing with Moldova that I don't completely understand. People are very obsessed with things being beautiful or "frumos".... and while this may seem like an excessive display, it's all for the frumos factor. I think it has a lot to do with pride....


























My host mother (she is a microbiologist at the wine cellar) with me in the cellar (the super long cellar that our village is famous for!).




















The Milestii Mici sign that welcomes people to our village. Fancy, isn't it?




















The kitchen table in my house. Notice what I am making. Yes, a mess, but other than a mess, Pomegranate salad. It was sooo super and my host family loved it (they have been waiting for me to cook something since I have been here). And all the ingredients are readily available and cheap. So I enjoyed it, although it wasn't exactly "cooking."








































,

ine

Pics!

























I think if you click on these pictures they will get larger. Okay, a few descriptions. First, me with the little girls that hang out on the street by my house. I usually talk to them about once a day, and sometimes we play "volleyball" or a crazy game that is sort of like ring around the rosy, but you ring a round a fire pit. Eek. Okay second, a picture of crafts in the "Piata Artistica" in Chisinau, the capital. They are beautiful little stacking dolls, like the kind I used to have when I was littler-- but if you look closer, there are pictures of some of our favorite people! Third, My room in my house right now. Charming, isn't it? Fourth, my family's grape plants during harvest time (these are located a 2 minute walk from my house), Fifth-- my host mother picking grapes, and finially the road on my way to school (notice the lack of paving)-- it looks beautiful in this picture, but in the mud, it is not so fun!

pics, continued

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

trying this one more time.... computers in Moldova are more fickle than computers in the US, if you can imagine that ITS staff! Sorry for the randomness of the pictures, I promise to TRY and be better in the future!

The sunset on my block in Milestii, this is around where I run during the week-- through the fields. It is no wonder I get lost a lot with the distracting scenery!



The outside of my house in Milestii Mici. (As you can see it has a huge garden in front, and is actually quite quaint. The only "issue" is the outside toilet that is through the chicken coup and by a large dog. Oh well, c'est la vie)

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In the mean time, as in, while I am waiting for the computer to upload my pictures, I have to say that Moldova has some of the most beautiful OCTOBER SKYS of any place that I have ever been. Because of the lack of street lights, house lights, and light in general, the stars and the moon are so bright, and so clear. I love it, of course. I tried to talk to my host brother about constellations the other night and he thought I was crazy and went inside-- at least I tried, right? For now, I am going to fight for the right to be allowed to stand outside in the dark.

On another note, I just wanted you all to know that the first piece of mail I received in Moldova was from Joan, that's right Hamilton folks, JHS found me in Moldova and sent me a summary of convocation. WONDERFUL. I appreciate the mail, Hamilton, really I do-- my friends here thought it was funny that I got "junk" mail in Moldova, however, I know Hamilton just wants me to donate a little bit of my $2 a day salary. We will see. Since then, I have gotten one other piece of mail-- an absentee voting ballot from Bergen Country. The 201, they've got their shit together. Right? :)

I need to get on that, and by get on that I mean learn enough Romanian to use the post office. We will see. Anyway, don't be upset by a lack of mail-- hopefully in a month or so I will be acomplished enough to perform small daily tasks in Romanian, besides, can I please buy some water. Today I also added some links to other PCV blogs (all people in my training class in Moldova) on my website-- you can check them out, I think most people have been having better luck with their pictures than I have.

I miss you all! (Seriously, all of you). Until later or in Romanian, pe curind!

Pictures! Finially...

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Hopefully this works. Here are a few pictures into my life so far during Peace Corps Training, called Pre-Service training or (PST). I am having a lot of fun, but it is a lot of structure-- and a lot of bossing around from host mothers who don't understand why one would want to go running, or who feel it necessary to let you know that if you take a shower after dark, or rather, if you touch water (ie wash clothes) after the sun goes down you will definitely get sick, maybe even die. They try to protect us as much as possible, at least they care enough to inform us, silly Americans.

To go along with these pictures I included another quote, one I just read today, that accurately describes what PST is about, and what all my experiences fit into. Enjoy!

Peace Corps training is like no other training in the world, having somethign in common with college life, officer's training, Marine basic training, and a ninety-day jail sentence.
- Moritz Thomsen, Living Poor


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The entire Moldova 19 group at the beginning of training, in front of our hotel.




A common question...

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

So, we laugh amongst ourselves as volunteers about how our families and friends responded to the news that we were leaving for Moldova. The most common response, it seems, was "Moldova.... where is that?."

Well thanks to the logic of a 12 year old, and google, I stumbled across a very suprising discovery. There is actually a board game called "Where IS Moldova." Of course I have never played this game, but the discovery still made my day. So check it out. Below, is listed a few tidbits from the website advertising the game... if you like it, you might want to check out their site in its entirity (www.whereismoldova.com).

Like most things, I just find this amusing.

The following descriptions were taken right off of their website.

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ABOUT THE GAME

The game can be played in less than an hour. So, it won't keep your family & friends up half the night, unless you want it to!

The game introduces a new concept in general knowledge. No longer is the most knowledgeable player guaranteed to win!

The object of the game is to achieve a chain of five or more 'connecting' (bordering) countries on the map.

You will need to challenge, defend, take the occasional gamble and even STEAL - so beware! You'll need your wits about you and plenty of Strategy cards.

In your quest for victory: will you lead from the front, or bide your time and catch your opponents unaware?

Remember - anyone
can win from any position.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What is SPECIAL about this game?

Games usually take less than an hour to complete! It's the only board game with an upright magnetic map as well as a horizontal playing game board. The game combines Strategy, General Knowledge and Luck! Over 4 years and thousands of hours were spent in a quest to create the 'perfect family board game'. It is described by many as a masterpiece. "Where IS Moldova?" is BIG, Beautiful and made in Britain. Most of all it is GREAT FUN!


Why is the game called Where IS Moldova?

Moldova has played International football with some distinction and performed well in the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest. Few people in the world know that Moldova is a country let alone where it is. Moldova's main claim to fame is that it produces some of the world's finest, most exquisit wines.


I've often been disappointed buying new board games in the past. What if I buy your game and I don't like it?

Everyone who has played "Where IS Moldova?" seems to love it. If it turns out NOT to be your 'cup of tea': you can return it within 30 days of purchase - in any condition - EVEN IT IT HAS BEEN PLAYED and receive a FULL refund. If you bought on line - just call us. We will credit your card in full and arrange a free collection. If you purchased from a shop - the shop will refund you in full - providing you take your receipt along. We are the only board game company in the world to do this! HAVE WE GONE MAD?... No, we just want all our customers to be happy.


Most ordinary board games cost between £20 and £35. Why is your game a bit dearer than some others?

This is no ordinary game! Most board games have a 'standard' size labelled box & plastic tray, some paper money, game cards, a paper labelled board, a couple of dice and some plastic pieces. "Where IS Moldova?" has a huge, free-standing steel map board, a non reflective, encapsulated map, 72 crafted magnets, a magnetic score board (pen included), a laminated game board, four dice and three different card sets. We chose top quality rather than other options. You may recall a general knowledge game that came to Britain in 1982. Then, it cost £30 - equivalent to £68 today in 2006.


Is this game mostly about Geography?

Definitely not. There are questions from 60 different categories.


How long does the game usually take to play?

On average, the game takes just 50 minutes to complete. If you want to play for longer, there is a brilliant scoring system.


How many people can play the game?

The best number is 4. But you can still really enjoy it with 2 or 3 players. It is also great fun to play in teams.


Do I have to be good at general knowledge to be able to win?

Not necessarily. The game combines memory, tactics and LUCK as well as general knowledge so it gives anyone who plays a good chance to win.


Do the questions vary in difficulty?

Yes. Some are easy. Some are challenging. Almost half are multiple choice. This gives everyone a 1 in 3 chance of guessing correctly!


Are there plenty of interesting / fun questions in the game?

Yes. There are questions on Comedy, Celebrities, Music, Television, Famous Quotes, The Human Body, Wine, Sport, Books, Unusual Places, Kings & Queens, Technology, Opera & Ballet, Films, Famous People & Places and much more... There are over 1,000 questions from 60 different Categories. Almost half the questions are multiple choice.


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Sounds appealing, right? Until then. O zi buna! (have a good day!)





Ha, ha, ha



A person has two legs and one sense of humor, and if you’re forced with the choice—it’s far better to lose a leg.

– Charles Linden

For me, that quote accurately describes my time here in Moldova so far. At least 6 or 7 times a day I find myself in awkward/weird/compromising/strange/fun/new/unbelievable situations or conversations. And the ONLY way I can deal with this is by laughing, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot.

This is the best part of learning to become part of a different culture—experiencing the cultural differences first hand. For example, never in my life have I been force-fed like I am here. In Moldova, like a lot of other cultures around the world, food is one of the largest outward signs of hospitality. You welcome someone by feeding them. You also take care of their health and well being by feeding them. While this is all obvious, the connection between how much you care about someone’s wellbeing and how much you feed them is very strong. And it’s funny because you aren’t hungry, you just ate, you visit someone else’s house and their host mother puts out enough food for you and 6 other people to eat for a week (this is only a slight exaggeration). Eventually you learn to not fight people, and just eat. But if you are like me and you have devised a secret plan to take really small bites often, so it looks like you are eating more than you are—you are in for a shock. Moldovans are onto this trick. They will watch you eat, all the while saying “maninc, Maninc!” (Eat, eat!). I used to answer that “I am eating!”, but I have learned not to do that because it warrants me taking a pause from putting food in my mouth, at witch point I am reminded, that I do indeed, need to eat.

And another example, dealing with other volunteers, is that when we make purchases, we still don’t know enough of the language to know exactly what we are ordering/buying. So it makes every restaurant meal (few and far between, when we are in the capital), every attempt to get a bottle of water, and shopping for clothes (winter clothes in particular, it is getting really cold here) quite the adventure. So you have to laugh, or else… I don’t know what would happen but it wouldn’t be good, I know that for sure.

So to sum up my first month (eek I have actually been here for a month, the time has flown!) in the Peace Corps, I have to say that I laughed, a lot, a lot, A LOT. Sometimes not even while an event was going on. Sometimes in the middle of a class, or a speech I just remember—hey I’m in Moldova and laugh at how unbelievable it all really is J

(and on a PS to this entry, my host family just got running water. YIPPPEE! What does this mean, in reality, and for me? Don’t start thinking that I’m living in the water-luxury land. No shower still, that’s still by bucket, from a bucket, in a bucket, depending which volunteer you ask. But now instead of dragging the water from the well, we have a little faucet. This is just in time for the winter)

Social Happenings

Monday, October 02, 2006

After four hours of Romanian every day, the most one can hope for is to rest, do something relaxing, and then do homework for a few hours every night. Although there are 7 of us in the village together, we do not spend much of our “down time” hanging out with each other. This is issue that Peace Corps pushes—your time out of the classroom is best spent with a host country national, or a Moldovan in this case, learning about the culture, observing and improving your language in a real situation.

We do, however, spend some time together outside of class, and that time is well deserved and really does help ease the stresses of the day to day. We go on walks around town, last night we had a movie night and watched the Princess Bride on my laptop. It is hard for us to “hang out” in the village, because there are 6 females and 1 male, and the only place to really “hang out” outside is at bars—and that is a culturally unacceptable gender ratio to be wandering the streets at night (not that it is unsafe, necessarily). Although one night last weekend we accompanied our host sibilings (not my brother, as he was “too cool” for this activity) to the down discotech. Not to bad for my first disco experience, imagine if you will a 7th grade dance, with techy music and a little older of a crowd. It was fun, not something I necessarily am looking forward to doing again, but I think a good thing to experience. (That’s my motto with everything here… try to experience it with an open mind, if I like it, great, if not, then I will just let it go so to speak).

Twice a week we mix things up and get to hang out with the other 30 volunteers currently located in 5 other sites. Hang out might be an exaggeration, but we attend lots of informative sessions together. The peace corps definitely stresses to spend less time trying to make “American Friends” which I agree with, and I think most people do also, it is just hard to conceptualize leaving the large group in a few months and “really” being in the Peace Corps… so we are trying to soak up a lot of comfort while we can. I know that these posts have not been overly intellectual or containing much substance, but I haven’t really had the time to stop and think—so for now, enjoy the information as it is!

Also, on a homey note I received a call from my family today and found out the jets are tied for first in the east. WOOhoo. (yeah, right). Also I found out that Osama is not dead, and that a t-shirt I bought my brother (Scott) for Christmas last year landed him Stones tickets. Hows that for a productive conversation? Hopefully we can do it often because apparently it is pretty cheap to call here from the US.

AND how could I forget but CONGRATS AMBER AND DAVE! Married! Yay! (I am betting that some Hamiltonian will read this before Amber does, so can you let me know how the wedding went and possibly send me some pics? Thanks!)

Grape stains...



… are good stains. It’s true I tell you. Upon arriving “home” today after a long day of team building with the PC and other volunteers in my group (more on that soon), I found my host mother, brother, and her sister and her sisters’ kids (she has 7 sisters and one brother) gathered in the front of our housing starting the process of making wine. Even thought I was tired from a day of playing in the woods, I clearly wanted to get in on that action. They were taking bags and bags (and bags) of grapes and squeezing them into these huge 5 foot tall barrels, that were about the width of two car tires. I asked my host brother if I could do the churning (this was a weird request, apparently, because he was all too happy to be relieved of that task) and he said that I could, but that I shouldn’t because I could get my clothes dirty). I quickly decided that this was well worth the stains. So, so long Ham-Trek shirt, as it got COVERED with grape splattering. But it is okay, it was a very interesting process. All of the grapes for the wine we started to make were grown in my front yard, in an arc overhanging the driveway, and in the fields down the street from our house. They were tended to and picked by myself and members of my host family. Then they were put through a churner, stems, skin and all, and smushed so that they are now sitting in a barrel of juice—and if my Romanian is correct, I think they said we will either have wine in four days, or have to do something else to the grape juice in five days? I guess I will have to let you know that when I find out myself, but I did catch part of a sentence that let me know that the weather has some effect on how long we have to wait for wine, or vin. Tomorrow we are going to my host mother’s sister’s house to pick her grapes. Apparently this will go on for about a week or so, as each household makes their own wine. I’m loving it though… and my host mother likes feeding me different types of grapes so that I could get the flavor. Also, my host mother and her sisters realized how much I love pears and walnuts (which grow all over the place here, and are all ripe for picking now) and they all pick up what they find as we walk through the fields… at the end they fill my pockets and call it “pay” for me working. It works for me. On a weirder note, I am trying to introduce them to “frozen grapes” but it is not working out that well. Every time I put a bowl of grapes in the freezer, my host brother laughs at me and takes them out. Or I sneak past him but then I find the next day my host mother has taken them out a few hours ago and they are already defrosted. This could go on for a while, but frozen grapes must prevail!

For the more serious and job-related stuff- So far we have been following a pretty rigid schedule for training. Four days a week we remain in our respective villages to have language classes, for four – five hours a day. Which may seem like a lot, but it is necessary to learn the language. (It has been slow and some what frustrating, however, I have learned more than I expected to in 2 weeks!) Then two days a week we travel into the regional center, Ialoveni, to do things as a larger group such as get immunizations, learn health procedures or technical skills. It is all very exciting and new, but the schedule is definitely starting to get to us—there is only so much Romanian you can learn before your head explodes (all of us who have had Spanish in the past keep lapsing into Spanish phrases and using Spanish verbs and prepositions… its funny because we understand each other, but our language teacher does not understand us)… It is a lot, especially a long with living in the midst of the same host culture-- sometimes you just need a break. And today was that break. All the trainees went to a park and had a feast of Moldovan food (fresh bread, chicken, pork, cheese, placenta, tomatoes with something that is similar to baba) for lunch, followed by some football, Frisbee and volley ball games—then we did team building, challenge course-ish items that older volunteers (people who have been in the Peace Corps in Moldova already for around a year) had prepared for us. It was particularly interesting for me because I realized that even if I had seen the elements before, and taught most of them, each group of people (school, camp, peace corps) brings new aspects to each element and completely transforms the whole experience. All in all it was a great day, and a great chance to get to know some other volunteers who are not in my small group. I will have to remember to thank the previous volunteers for putting on quite a great afternoon—having facilitated many of the same elements before, I know how much work went into the entirety of the event.

Also, a few catch up notes to people at home. I haven’t been able to send pictures yet or post any because the internet connection is way too slow. Am I adjusting to Moldova? I would have to say yes. At an alarming rate, too. I no longer am shocked, or even notice, when I have to halt my running to allow pigs/goat/chickens to waddle/walk/sprint across the road. My aim has definitely improved in the bathroom (peeing into a hole is trickier than it looks), and I have ventured on public transportation by myself. Also, I seem to be getting a long well and understating my host mother and brother. When we are out in the community or visiting friends, and someone says something to me in Romanian, either too fast or too complicated (like past “I have a dog. His name is Spot. Spot can run), I find myself turning to her for an explanation—usually visual, but still it is amazing to me because she doesn’t speak English at all. What have I not gotten used to yet? Speaking Romanian, clearly. Dressing up when I leave the house. “Showering” in a bucket (we boil water on the stove and then sponge ourselves—Everyone in the house is very skilled at this—while I make a huge mess). And the food—it is very good but very heavy (my host mother things vegetables are good for you no matter how they are cooked, boiled, baked, or fried with oil… oye). I am trying to balance trying new things with attempting to eat a balanced diet when I don’t know what is in each food. For example we eat Borsch (soup) all the time, I looked up the translation in English to see if we had such a thing in America, and it just said “sour soup.” Good job websters.

And FINIALLY, for those of you who have been keeping track, I shampooed my hair. (for those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, ignore this—its too weird of an idea to explain). I did it last week, thus ending a one year and 2 months streak. I had to. This conditioner only thing really only works when you have running water in a shower, and can thus wash out all the conditioner, and use the hot water to scrub. Oh well—alls well that ends well, right?
 
   





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