Where is Moldova, anyway?

What did I do today? Well, for one thing, I made a pirate flag of which I am very proud. You heard right, a pirate flag—drawn, pasted and sewn. Yes people, this is your tax dollars at work, here in a foreign country, halfway around the world, in a foreign language, making pirate flags. What else did you expect from ME when I left for the Peace Corps?

Anyway, this pirate flag was not made with the sole intention of teaching children in this landlocked country how fun it is to pretend to be pirates (although this might be a happy unforeseen side effect—they don’t really play pirates too much, bandits yes, pirates no). It had a greater cause.

This week I joined another volunteer in starting a sort of “outing club.” This had been an idea of mine for quite a while, but unfortunately because I was sick, it stayed on the back burner in favor of doing my assigned “serious” work, and um, getting better. Then one of my friends in the Peace Corps, who also shares my interest in the outdoors, and maybe as well in pirates, decided to start an outing club in his town.

We kicked off this club was a giant cross town scavenger hunt! (sound familiar? That’s right, once addicted to making treasure hunts, always addicted) The kids loved it, tiring as it was (one of the girls did the entire thing, about a 3 hour walk, in high heels!). And in addition to the fun of a scavenger hunt, they learned a little bit about how to use a compass and the difference between SSE and NNW. It’s always fun to watch people try to use a compass for the first time—Lord knows how easy it is to set off in the exact wrong direction.

I had a lot of fun with this activity because it reminded me a lot of the work I always did at camp, plus it was fun for the kids… as a language professor put it, it is “unheard of” here, an activity like this. Where to go next, who knows? But this is definitely a start, and I am excited to start a club in my own town… teaching the kids to appreciate the outdoors, or to at least explore them a little bit and take a break from the TV and violent computer games. I’m afraid besides the flag making, I wasn’t too big of a help in the implementation of this treasure hunt, as you all know my sense of direction in new places… but I’m excited for the other events that this can build up to.

Either way, our treasure hunt, of course, ended with buried treasure, under the Jolly Rodger, of course. (some American coins and a compass, to take home and practice with). And, one Moldovan, at least, is now using the word “Ahoy.”

Job well done, in my humble opinion.