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Where is Moldova, anyway?

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

Flood Update

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Flooding in Eastern Europe probably isn't reaching you through the 10 o'clock news if you are living in the states. So I will update you. Many Moldovan villages along both sides of the country - if you don't really know what Moldova looks like, get yourself a map, or google it - have been flooded, evacuated or flooded and evacuated. This is what happens when your borders are rivers. The rain had seemed to have stopped, but then today, an unpredicted rainfall hit Chisinau, the capital, causing the city streets to flood up. Romania and Ukraine seem to be fairing somewhat worse. None of the floods have affected my village - we just lost phone and electricity for a few days, and had a bit more mud than usual. The following are videos taken by Moldova News agencies, of the flooding:

Flooded Moldovan Villages by Air

Chisinau - Train station under water

The Mighty $

Sunday, July 27, 2008

The value of the dollar might be falling these days, but the "umph" factor isn't... I found an American dollar tucked into a bunch of papers in my drawer. It just felt so big- and unnecessarily so - very American. :) I think it might be weird going back to "big money"... Although I remember when I first got to Moldova, I thought their money was so small it was like "monopoly money." Time definitely changes perspective, if not everything.

US 1 Dollar and Moldova 1 Lei

Rain, Rain - Go Away!



For the last 8 or 9 days in a row, I have consistently been woken up around 3 or 4am everyday by intense storms - echoing thunder, lightly that literally lit up my room, and rain falling so hard that it gives you a headache (one night, it even hailed strangely enough). During the day, the rains come and go, while the clouds remain - but at night, for the last week or so, the storms have been consistent.

Up until last week Moldova had been in the midst of a mini-drought, now it seems to have more rain than it can handle. As a country bordered by two rivers, Moldova has many flood-danger zones and people have been evacuated as the rivers have started to pour over. (This is not where I live, I live in the middle of the country - halfway in between Romania and Ukraine.) Ukraine and Romania seem to be having a worse time of it, with more intense flooding and urgent circumstances. I met the other day two Swedish travelers who had tried to visit Ukraine from Moldova, got on a bus to leave, but had to return because the roads were too flooded to pass.

Hopefully things dry up in the next few days.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L7442224.htm

http://news.trendaz.com/index.shtml?show=news&newsid=1256470&lang=EN

Our Center :)



Scenes from the opening of our youth resource center...
...And of the center in use, already!
(I still haven't gotten the hang of properly placing photos in my blog, but you can make any of the photos larger by clicking on them)




Cutting the ribbon to officially open our center! (we used red, green and purple twisted together... red was too plain for us.)

I hate technology

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Okay. After many hours of battling the forces of my WAY out-of-date computer and dial-up internet, I bring you a presentation - which I really hope you watch after all this - of the process of fixing up our youth center.

For those of you who haven't been reading my blog this past year, we (myself, my NGO partner, and our local youth council) fixed up an old, unused book deposit -- left unopened since the USSR (and having the dust to prove it) -- into a youth resource center. Many of you donated funds for this project - including Returned Peace Corps Volunteers - New Jersey, Holy Angels and St. Andrew's.

Last Friday was the opening, and it was FABULOUS. The center is amazing - and completely done by the kids, every last detail from the sign over the door (the girl who wrote it wrote "Peace to all who enter HERE" and put the emphasis on the word here not on the word peace), to the pencil holders (old coffee cans that they decorated). The opening was a really happy and very warm day. Yes, government officials and important people (peace corps included) came. But my favorite part was talking to the parents of the kids from our youth council.

Anyway, I hope to put up pictures of how the final center looks this week - and pictures of the opening ceremony! But for now, you will have to deal with this video - it is of the process of creating this center. We showed it at the opening because we wanted people to know two things: 1) how horrible the building was when we began and 2) how much work the youth actually did.

There is actually a more up-to-date version of this power point - converted-into-a-film, that includes all the last minute scrambling around we did the last day before we opened the center. We finished all the work with 16 minutes to go before the opening. That's how we do it... :) However, I failed to save the up-to-date version, so you have to settle for this version. Don't worry though, I will put up the pictures of the center opening and the work we did the last day some time this week.

I hope you enjoy. (you don' t need popcorn, it's only 6 minutes).

Way Overdue

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

We are (finally!) opening our youth center on Friday. Pictures and updates to come, but thank you again - all of you who supported this project!

A civil action (sort of)

Monday, July 14, 2008











(sorry about this - I still don't understand how to get blogger.com to allow me to move around pictures. Help, anyone? I can only put the pictures at the end or the beginning - not frumos!)
-------
"what you put in the ground...
that is what will grow."

This was the slogan of our Youth Council's recent anti-litter demonstration. We spent an afternoon cleaning our central park, and then took all the trash we collected (from ice cream wrappers and beer bottles, to cans of tuna and socks) and tied it together with strings. The next morning, Sunday, piata day (which means many people walk through the center of our town), we hung the strings of trash in a tree on the main road in our village. So it looked as if the tree was growing trash, instead of fruit. And we put a sign next to the tree with our witty slogan.

We then spent 5 hours standing next to the tree, defending the tree, defending our positions on littering, talking to people, and in general, having a good time. It was really interesting for me to see both the reactions of the people who passed us - most common: "what is it new year's? (this is when Moldovans decorate trees, not for Christmas), "what is this craziness?", "why did you kids get our streets so dirty" and "are you selling bottles?". As well as the responses of my kids in defense of what they were doing: "no this isn't craziness, this is reality", or "there is so much trash on the ground I'm surprised trees like this don't already exist."

When people would walk by without really looking, and just talk down to us - the kids would respond by asking them to read the plaque, and asking them if they agreed or disagreed. Very rationally, I am proud of them. Of course, there were some crazies who yelled at us, and children who wanted to "pick" the garbage from the tree -- and the people who did drive by in cars slowed so much that we were afraid they would cause an accident -- but overall I think it was a huge success.

Littering is a huge problem in Moldova - and is usually one of the first things new volunteers observe about Moldova, unfortunately. It is such a pretty country, but the communal land, is not taken care of. Moldovans know it is a problem as well. So we needed to do something different, to bring attention to a problem that everyone knows exists, and has just accepted that exists.

The idea from this came from something HEAG (Hamilton Environmental Action Group) or something like that, did at Hamilton while I was a student there. Instead of putting one day's trash in the dump, they put it in the middle of the walkway at our college. So we had to walk around it, had to notice it. That really affected me in a way that anti-littering campaigns that were in your face and aggressive didn't - it was fact of the matter, and hard to ignore. Since we don't really have the luxury of sidewalks here, and since Moldova is an agriculture society, I morphed the idea into the "what you plant, that is what will grow" idea.

And I think it worked fabulously. While you, in America, might be used to these weird ways that campaigns, magazines, advertisers and NGOs get your attention, this kind of round-about way of reaching people is new to Moldova. It definitely got a reaction, we are waiting to see if it gets any results (many people gave the excuse that they litter because there aren't trash cans -- true fact that there aren't). One older lady started yelling at us in Russian that we waited too long to do this trash tree - the problem was too big now-- and then yelled at passing youth that they better heed our warnings, or they would be eating trash - but that the state of the planet didn't matter for her, becuase she was soon going to die. Another girl made a snide remark about us making a "beautiful" tree in the middle of the town - her boyfriend corrected her by saying that we didn't throw the stuff on the ground in the first place, we just collected it. Nice.

If anything, we got people talking, and noticing. And that is what you want, and really, all you can ask for.

BITCH!

Sunday, July 13, 2008

I was lucky enough to spend three weeks this summer traveling through former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe. (Pictures to come, when my internet connection decides to behave – and when I can pick out which photos best represent my trip – I’m picky, you know). It was beautiful! I loved Montenegro the best, followed by Bosnia. Croatia was gorgeous as well – but the boat-loads of tourists seemed to take away from the atmosphere, where as Montenegro was very natural, and calm – with mountains coming all the way up to the sea. SEA! That’s right. With the exception of Hungary and Bosnia, I traveled along the coast because I miss salt water, living in a landlocked country during shore season.

During my trip, I picked up a few souvenirs for some Moldovan friends when it was fitting – my host mother has a magnet collection of all the places I (and the former volunteer who lived with her) have visited, chocolate for my chocoholic host brother, fresh lavender for a friend from my village who loves perfumes, a glass necklace for my partner who loves colorful, bright things, the magazine “cosmo” in English for my Romanian tutor (this was upon request), and a mug from a city in Croatia shaped like a Roman theater for my other Romanian tutor. All little things, but I took time to carefully, and personally select these tokens.

I didn’t realize there was a problem until I was on my way back to Moldova. I had purchased the mug for my Romanian tutor in the Croatian city of Pula – a small city, close to the Italian border, that has awesome Roman ruins in it. It was also the home of James Joyce at one point – and since my tutor loves to hear about authors and their travels – she is very big on the literature – I chose this city to buy her a gift from. It’s a nice mug, is in the shape of a theater, and has the word Pula written on it.

Problem: The word Pula means “bitch” in Romanian. I had purchased my tutor, and dear friend, a mug that says BITCH in capital, block letters – and was about to present it to her as a gift. I laugh at myself for how quickly (it was towards the end of my 3 week travels) I got out of the mindset of speaking Romanian that I didn’t even catch my error.

After consulting my host mom on the issue, and having her laugh at me – I decided to go against her advice and give the gift anyway – thinking it would be something funny that she could remember me, the eccentric American, by.

I prefaced giving her the gift by asking her not to get mad. Have you ever received a gift introduced by such lovely prose? Awkward. But she laughed. And laughed. And laughed. And agreed that the mug was lovely, was mad at me that I forgot Romanian vocab words in purchasing the cup, and laughed some more. She said she would try to change to “P” to an “R” – or just put it on a shelf instead of using it (but backwards, so no one can see what is written on it) -- who wants to drink their morning coffee, or serve guests tea, in a mug that says bitch? – definitely not frumos. But she ended up landing on the idea of leaving it Pula – because she says, in her words, the story is too precious – and that I couldn’t leave her with a better one if I tried. How's that for a conversation piece?

Links I like (of late)

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

During college, I remember checking my email 4 or 5 times a day, and spending countless hours "researching" in front of the computer. Since arriving in Moldova, I clearly haven't had that kind of unlimited and easy internet access - so I've had to better "select" what I use my time on the internet for... and these are the links/articles I've been reading (and been liking) lately. Some of them sent to me, some of them I found, some relevant, some news, some funny -- I thought I'd share.

Lesson Learned



It is important to shake out your clothes VERY thoroughly when you take them in from drying on the line, or you will take in many ants as well...

La Multi Ani, America

Friday, July 04, 2008

In honor of the 4th, I have composed a list of things (people excluded) that I miss most from America, and am looking forward to enjoying upon my return. Some of the items may seem strange to you - they seem strange to me too - it's strange the things you miss living away from home. Other things, of course, are completely predictable. Sure there are things that I don't miss - at all - but our nation's birthday is not the day to list them...

In no particular order:
  • Slurpees!
  • Free (and awesomely stocked) public libraries
  • brown sugar
  • mountains
  • the shore
  • drinking water from a tap
  • soft serve frozen yogurt
  • yankee stadium (and baseball in general)
  • anonymity
  • rye bread
  • skittles
  • cold cuts
  • diversity (of thought and of culture)
  • the old American sense of optimism
  • live music
  • kayaking
  • jogging without people asking me where I am going
  • Having a peer group
  • customer service (even verizon's "wonderful" service is welcome at this point)
  • swimming
  • being informed on world issues
  • public transportation that runs on a schedule
  • everything bagels with olive creme cheese
  • privacy
  • bbq's
  • crossword puzzles

The Gas Question

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Both Moldovans and Americans make it a habit to ask me where gas is more expensive, Moldova or America. Just as I imagine it is in American now, gas prices are all the buzz. Moldova itself does have any gas companies (that I know of). It is reliant on imported gas, from Romaia or Russia, a situation that not-ironically mirrors Moldova's sandwiched position in between the two centers of power -- each tugging their own way.

When people ask me, I usually shrug them off and tell them I don't drive here, so I don't pay attention -- but that is just in an effort to conceal the fact that I never really memorized the metric system, and never did the conversions. So here it is, the answer you and I and all the Moldovans I talk to have been waiting for. Someone check my calculations (math I can do, conversions sometimes not).

The facts:
  • 1 gallon = 4.55 Liters
  • 1 dollar = 9.7 lei (July 3rd, 2008)
  • 1 liter gas in Moldova = 14.43 lei
  • 1 gallon gas in American = ?
4.55 x 14.43 = 65.66 lei (Price in Moldovan lei of one gallon of gas)
65.66 / 9.7 = 6.77 dollars (Price in Dollars of gas in Moldova).

The winner, (or loser actually), is Moldova. I'm not sure what gas is in America, I have been hearing around 5 dollars a gallon. Moldova, coming in at almost 7 dollars a gallon, blows America's "super high prices" away. How do people afford it, when a 2 hour bus ride to the capital costs me 4 dollars?
 
   





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