Yarn skills!

A super cool friend who also shares my love of knitting gave me some wool, a spindle, and how-to book before I left the States to fulfill my goal of learning to spin yarn. Here is what I produced.

Preparing to COS

Another acronym?! Ahhh, what's with these PCVs and their acronyms??? COS stands for Close Of Serivce. That means, done, all over, finished, coming home!!! I now have 2 days left of my service here in Moldova! Doesn't it feel like only yesterday you were saying goodbye to me? Well, maybe not yesterday, I definitely feel like I have been gone along time. Friends have gotten married, kids have been born, people have moved, things have changed. The world went on without me. What's it going to be like when I return, changed from my experience, to friends and family that have done so much in the past 2 years that I haven't been able to be a part of? Will life pick up from where I left it? What will I do? Where will I live?



As I am writing up all my reports, getting documents signed, getting medically cleared (it is as much work to leave PC as it is to enter) I am starting to wonder what the next step of my life will hold. I feel so lucky that I am at a point in my life where I am completely free to do WHATEVER I want. Literally, I can live where I want, work where I want, do what I want. How many times do we reach a time where we are not tied down to anything? I am so excited to come home and see what will happen next!!! See you all soon! December 17 11:30pm I will be in Seattle!

Vacation (part 2)

Alright, so the rest of my vacation was spent in Belgrade, Serbia; Montenegro; Croatia; Bosnia; and Italy. The whole thing was 3 weeks of amazingness. I traveled the first two alone and the last week with my mom and grandma. In these three weeks I hiked up mountains, jumped off cliffs into turquoise water, floated in the sea, ate delicious sea food, watch Croatia celebrate in the streets after a soccer win, and saw the Colosseum in Italy. It was a much needed trip out of eastern Europe. A funny thing I noticed is that when I would sign to my grandma I would be speaking Romanian, not english. When I would sign "yes" I would be saying "da" to myself. i can only assume this happened because both are stored in the foreign language section of my brain. It is like me confusing Russian with Romanian now when I speak with Moldovans, but this could be due to the fact that they interchange the two also.

Kotor, Montenegro

Budva, Montenegro Croatians celebrating after winning a football game.

Dubrovnik, Croatia
Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik

Mostar, Bosnia and Hercegovina

Outside of Mostar

Outside of Mostar. Tour group.

Sarejevo, BiH

Sarejevo

Rome

Grandma playing in the fountain.

Inside the colleseum.