Summer Fun!
So far this summer has been a lot of fun, and has afforded me both the opportunity to travel around Moldova, as well as the opportunity to be active in some 
once-a-year projects, and to do more activities with the youth of our village—who now are out of school for the summer!
As far as my travels have gone, I have been to both Sorocca and Orhei Vechi. Sorocca is hailed as the “Gypsy Capital” of Moldova. There, exists a castle that was built in the 1400’s, as well as many “fancy” homes of the “rich Gypsys” ga
thered in this town on a hill. (also there lives the Gypsy king, who I, of course, did not meet) There still exists tensions between the Moldovan population and the Roma people, but I will leave that article for another day. The castle is one of Moldova’s only tourist attractions, or something that comes CLOSE to being a tourist attraction—I loved this sign on the front of the castle, it is very Moldova—no smoking, no bathrooms, and no eating sunflower seeds in the castle!
once-a-year projects, and to do more activities with the youth of our village—who now are out of school for the summer!As far as my travels have gone, I have been to both Sorocca and Orhei Vechi. Sorocca is hailed as the “Gypsy Capital” of Moldova. There, exists a castle that was built in the 1400’s, as well as many “fancy” homes of the “rich Gypsys” ga
thered in this town on a hill. (also there lives the Gypsy king, who I, of course, did not meet) There still exists tensions between the Moldovan population and the Roma people, but I will leave that article for another day. The castle is one of Moldova’s only tourist attractions, or something that comes CLOSE to being a tourist attraction—I loved this sign on the front of the castle, it is very Moldova—no smoking, no bathrooms, and no eating sunflower seeds in the castle! 
The city of Sorocca itself is very pretty and lies right on the Ukrainian border, with the river. Border patrol here is not as strict as one would think. While I got reprimanded for taking a picture of the border, and was forced to delete it from my camera, a Moldovan man later came up to us and told us we could just swim across the river if we said we needed to collect our cows (grazing on the other side of the river). Oh, Moldova.
Orhei Vechi, literally Old Orhei, is an old settlement outside of one of the cities in Moldova. It has a system of caves and underwater fountains—some very pretty hiking, alt
hough definitely not “hiking” as we know it in America. One of the highlights of this trip was seeing the old Orthodox churches as well a
s the places, i.e. small holes in the wall, where Monks used to live. Tatie, 
look at these choir lofts! Imagine trying to climb those… I was scared just trying myself. Also, living in Orhei Vechi, are beautiful horses rumored to have been left by Ghangis Khan himself. Rumor or not, it was interesting to here. 
Back in Singerei, we have been working a lot towards an active youth community by holding sports days two days a week (so far basketball and ultimate Frisbee are the favorites of kids), a leadership seminar once a week, and many other activities grouped under a “Youth Initiative” for our village—with the goals being to make youth more active, as well as to empower them. My niche of this project, besides participating in general, is the formation of an “Outing Club.” It’s funny because this concept doesn’t translate into Romanian—and if I called it by a Romanian name, the title would need like 12 words to get to the point of an “Outing Club,” so we use the English words. And I described to them the focuses—to take trips outdoors, to learn to survive in the wild, to care about the environment, to be more active with our surroundings and to promote the appreciation of nature. We are planning a 3 day hiking trip for the end of August, but up until now we have started learning to use Compasses with scavenger hunts through our town! (of course, we end the activities with ice cream for all!)
As far as my “normal” place of work, Dezdna, we are having vacation for a month—summer vacation is kind of short for us! But that is okay. Before vacation we celebrated “Children’s Day”, which apparently is an international celebration—who knew? It was really fun and ended with a lot of arts and crafts, as well as me teaching the kids about freeze dancing—which they loved!
Besides melting me, summer has been good to me. The sunflowers here are GORGEOUS, yet are not that tall. (who knows if they will grow to their real heights, with the heat and lack of rain!). Yesterday me and another volunteer took an hour bus trip to a town up north that has a swimming pool… Right now I am realizing how for granted I took it watching the yanks in the AC in the family room and rolling outside to take a dip in the pool. It’s watermelon season here, but our refrigerator doesn’t get cold enough to make the watermelon cool! It’s okay though, it is still delicious.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, July 25, 2007 at 5:01 AM.
