Vacation!!!!!!

After almost 21 months of working in Moldova I am taking my last vacation. We are not allowed to travel in the last three months of our service and I had 18 days remaining so I decided to do one big trip and tour the Balkans. My trip started a week ago when I flew into Budapest, Hungary. It was a nice quick flight from Moldova, only an Hour and a half, on a small prop plane. My flight left Moldova a 5:45am. Since I had to be at the airport at 4am I had to stay in the capital the night before and wakeup at 3am to get ready and catch a taxi to the airport. Knowing I had to be up that early I couldn't seem to fall asleep the night before and got 0 hours of sleep before my flight. I arrived in Budapest at 6:15am and was completely exhausted. My plan was to meet up with a girl from couchsurfing.com and stay with her but I couldn't get in touch with her and spent my first hour in the city searching for internet and then a hostel. By the time I checked into the hostel it was around 9am. I found out the girl working there was from Romania and she was quite surprised I spoke Romanian. But by the time I put my bags down and crawled into a bunk to snooze I was so energized about being someplace new that I couldn't sleep and only ended up laying there for an hour until I finally got up and decided to tour the city. As someone going off no sleep I got around most of the city the first day. I did happen to find a huge park though that I laid down in for a rest in the sun. That night I was totally ready to sleep good and hard after being awake close to 38 hours. But guess what? Guess how good I slept? HORRIBLE! I think I was way too tired and too worried about actually getting sleep plus the walls of the hostel were paper thin and I could hear everybody that came and went. When I "woke" the next morning after very few hours of sleep I felt a little delirious and my eyes hurt so badly. So instead of walking the rest of the city I hadn't seen yet I decided to go chill out at the famous thermal baths. It was amazing!! There were huge pools indoor and outdoor full of natural warm water. I stayed there for hours just floating and relaxing, letting the jets massage my back and neck. That night I had planned on taking a night train to Bosnia but I found out that there is only a day train and I didn't want to waste a day traveling so I took a night train to Belgrade, Serbia instead, a city I originally planned to see but cut out at the last minute. So I was looking forward to anther night of bad sleep, especially because I didn't want to fork up the extra money for a sleeper car.

Wedding (year 2)

So once again it is wedding season!!! As soon as easter is over and nobody has to fast anymore the weddings start. I was invited to one last month by my new counterpart, her cousin was getting married. I went all out on this wedding and got my hair and make-up done and bought a new dress. The wedding was so much fun!!! I danced all night and finally gave up and went home at 2:30am even though it was still going on strong. my feet just couldn't take it anymore. At one point I had a guy ask me to dance to the fast music and he tried twirling me all over the dance floor and ended up just getting his toes stepped on a bunch. I can't help it if we don't grow up learning to dance like that.

BBQ-ing and Victory Day (May 9th)

May 9th is a big holiday in Moldova. It celebrates the end of WWII. And Moldovans use it as another excuse to celebrate and not work or go to school. There was a parade and concerts in my city all day long. It was very soviet affair with them carry the soviet union flag in the parade.




So my new found friends, he ones from easter who have adopted me into their family invited me to a BBQ 2 weeks later for victory day. Since they were providing all the food I felt I had to contribute something so I brought marshmallows and taught them all how to make smore's. Oh did they love them!!!! I also brought them their very own frisbee!!! Here are some fun pictures.

Easter (year 2)

Food, food, and more food!!!

Jason helped collect the goats from the fields at the end of the day.

Playing volleyball between stuffing our faces.

In the beci (pronounced baytch, like the cuss word but means cellar) drinking house wine.

Once again we celebrated easter Moldovan style. Only this time Jason was in the country to celebrate it and we spent the weekend at my new counterpart's grandma's house. (Side note: I have left my counterpart and NGO in the village since all she wanted me to do was teach english and wouldn't involve me in any of the stuff I was sent there to do. My new counterpart is super cool and only 20!) So we spent the weekend there eating way too much food, drinking way too much wine (vodka for Jason), and having tons of fun. I brought my frisbee along and taught them all how to play frisbee. It was a nice break to work all that food off. Here are some of the pictures. There was lots of family there and they were all really excited to meet the Americans and were all very impressed I speak the language. (I heard a few days later from one of my site mates that she heard from someone at work that heard from someone else that their friend had 2 Americans over to their house for easter!)