Saturday, October 21, 2006

Daniel(a friend), Daniel(my brother),
and Adrian(the neighbor)












My brother Vadim and sister Mariana







The scary yet cool old soviet Hospital by my house that was never completed


We took the stairs most of the way up....

...But then had to crawl through a hole in the ceiling to get on the roof
The five of us on the roof with Ialoveni behind us




An Orthodox church in Ialoveni























Elizaveta

Well, I am now back in Ialoveni, have been since Wednesday night. My trip was ok. It would have been wonderful except it was sooooo cold. I arrived in Elizaveta Saturday late afternoon and visited with my counterpart and visited my organization. My organization "Contentus" is an internet center and does other stuff with kids, I am not quite sure what though. I do know my counterpart wants me to start an English club and we have a couple concerts for disabled children in the winter. So after visiting the NGO we went to see my first potential host family, I had two options. It was a nice house with a mother and her 10 year old son, the dad is working in Moscow and her 16 year daughter is studying in Romania. The house had an indoor toilet, a washing machine, two pigs (yumm, I do like pork), and chickens. We hung out there and had lunch/dinner and then my counterpart took off and I didn't see her until Tuesday afternoon. I had told her I wanted to meet the other family but she insisted this one was the best. So as I was hanging out with family number 1 and looking at their photo albums(I saw at least 10) I began to realize my counterpart was in a lot of the pictures. So I asked if she was a good friend, nope, she is the woman's sister in law. Great I will live with a family who is related to my counterpart, exactly what Peace Corps advised us not to do. It was fine though. The woman was amazing. So Sunday I went to the internet center with my new host brother and my counterpart's son. I sat around for 5 hours watching boys play counterstrike, sounds fun huh? They even tried to teach me but it was hard because the computers were in Russian, hmmm, too bad I don't speak Russian. So while sitting there doing absolutely nothing I began to question what I was doing there in the first place. And after some boys began making fun of me in Romanian (which I didn't understand) I was ready to board a plane home as soon as I returned to Chisinau Tuesday. It was everything I could do not to break down right there in front of everyone. But like all volunteers have told us, Peace Corps is an emotional roller coaster, one minute your up and the next your down only to return up again five minutes after. And this is what happened. As soon as I returned back to my future host family's house and was given a big bowl of popcorn and was offered to go visit the other potential host family I felt great again. I did visit the other family but it was already kind of decided I would live with family #1. What is funny though is on Monday the mother from family #2 came over and made placienta and bread all day with mom #1. It was so fun, except I couldn't stop shivering, even with all my clothes on that I brought and three pairs of socks. It was about 10 degrees C in the house. But I forgot all of that once the placienta was done cooking. Placienta is my favorite. It is a flaky pastry filled with potato, cheese, cabbage, or pumpkin. Delicious. All in All my time in Elizaveta was good, I am looking forward to returning there in November. I returned to Chisinau Tuesday and stayed there until Wed. afternoon for some conferences with the volunteers and their counterparts.

Friday, October 13, 2006

My Site...

On Tuesday we learned where we will be living for the next two years. I will be up north in the raion of Baltsi(pronounced- belts) in the village of Elizaveta. It is a village of 3,700 and it is 15 minutes outside the city of Baltsi. I still am not quite sure what I will be doing though I know my organization works with kids. I don't know what their goals are but I do know that the village wants water, so hopefully I can be that awesome volunteer that brought them water, they currently have wells. The village has never had a volunteer before so I will be the interesting new person- "The American". Tomorrow we go visit our sites for 4 days all by ourselves. I have to get on the correct bus and get off in the correct village. Then I have to spend 4 days meeting my counterpart(the person I will be working with for the next two years) and potential host families. My counterpart has found three families for me and over the next four days I meet them and choose which one I want to live with for the next two years. This is really exciting!!! Luckily there are at least 5 volunteers who live in Baltsi or right around it who I can turn to in the next 4 four days if I need help or just a break from trying to speak Romanian.

The Wine Festival!!!






Saturday and Sunday the 7th and 8th was Moldova's 5th(?) annual wine festival. They close off a section of the main Blvd. and set up tents and booths for wine makers. People go around to different tents and try different wines from 10 in the morning until 10 at night. Some tents give free tastings at others you just buy a bottle and sit and drink it in tent, in the street, or in the park(we did all of the above). Our groups went in around 11am on Sunday and didn't leave until about 8:30 pm...9 hours of solid drinking. Now, I am not one to normally drink as I hate being hungover and I only like beer, but this didn't stop me. By noon a few of us had already finished off 3 bottles and were going for more. You may think this was an expensive day, buying bottle after bottle, but no bottle was over $3, the really good stuff was maybe $5...I think I spent $1.75 the whole day for a lot of wine, my lunch was more expensive than what I drank, $2.25. At one tent we were at we got to try to the different stages of wine. We tried the Must(pronounced moost) which is the point where the grapes are starting to ferment and create wine, at this point it is very sweet, almost like juice, but if you drink more than one glass you will be in the veceu(outhouse). We also got to try it in the stage between must and between wine, also pretty sweet, but not as gassy as the must. At one point in the afternoon there was about 15 of us sitting around some tables and there was always at least 10 bottles on the table. When it started to get dark there was music in the streets and we began to dance. Some locals danced with us and tried to teach us the Hora (the national dance). All in all it was a great day!!!

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Fish, Fish, and Guess What? More Fish!!!

That's right, all I eat is fish! Our doctor here in Moldova told us to be very cautious about fish and try to avoid it unless it is from an ocean, which Moldova doesn't have. I am pretty sure the fish my family gets is from Moldova, who wants to pay the extra money to buy fish imported when you can buy it cheaply from a vendor in the piata(market) unrefridgerated and covered in flies. The fish in our house does seem clean and somewhat healthy. We were warned against the metal levels in the fish but as long as it is cooked well enough we shouldn't get any parasitic infections in our tummies. So far so good. I made the mistake the first day I met my host family by telling them I love fish, totally forgeting what Lica (the doctor) said. So now we eat it every other day or as of lately everyday, I had it twice yesterday. Most people have a wide variety of food in their freezers- bags of veggies, meat, icecream, etc. But not us!!! We have just fish, and not a little bit of it. It takes a some time to rearranged and pack "new catches" in. Hopefully I will come home as healthy as I left........We eat chicken every once in a while, I had it fried for breakfast a couple mornings ago.