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!)

I've Moved!!!

For the first time in my life I am living alone. Completely alone! And I love it! I finally decided it was time to move out of my host family's house and live on my own. I found an apartment in the center of the city, I mean right in the center, on the main pedestrian walkway. I have updated my new phone number in the contact info on the left (if for some reason someone wants to call me).

The Moldovan Sauna Experience

What is the first thing that comes to mind when I say sauna??? Is it sitting in the sauna at your local gym for 10 minutes after your work out? Or do you see a spa retreat by yourself or with a couple close friends? But in either of the visions is it a personal experience, I mean one that doesn't involve a lot of people or a lively atmosphere? And how often do you sit in a sauna and for how long? Maybe once a year for 10 minutes? Well my friends, I am hear to inform you that I go to the sauna every Thursday afternoon with a group of 6-7 women for three hours. And it isn't a quite pampering time. We bring food, beer, homemade scrubs and masks, and stories of our weeks.

Moldovans (and many Eastern Europeans) see the sauna as a social hour (or three or four). They invite all their friends, strip down to their birthday suits (if you are with the same sex), set out a huge masa (in a different room of course), and sweat it all out for multiple hours. Sauna day is the day I look forward to all week. It is a time when I can go relax and shoot the shit with a group of wonderful women. We start by sitting in the sauna for 45 minutes to an hour, with short breaks in between to jump into the cold pool to cool down. Then we head to the room upstairs to eat and talk for 20 minutes (they drink beer, I drink water-don't want to get too dehydrated). Then we head back into the sauna and start preparing our different masks and scrubs. When we (Becky and I) started going to the sauna we were told each week a different way to prepare our homemade scrub. First it rubbing salt all over your body followed by honey for moisture. The next week we were told salt isn't good because it dries the skin out and that we should mix honey, olive oil, and cornmeal for a great scrub. The third week we were told coffee, sea salt, honey, and oil was the best scrub to make. After all the advice we had received (and of course are still receiving) we have settled on warming the honey in the sauna then mixing it with cornmeal and olive oil. It has worked as a great exfoliant so far. So we apply masks and scrubs for an hour or so before rinsing off and just relaxing in our last hour.

When I first heard about volunteers that had gone to the saunas in Moldova I was a little terrified. My first story was of a volunteer who was dragged to the sauna with his counterpart, made to strip down, sat sweating and drinking the mandatory alcohol (i.e. vodka), and was eventually made to lie down on his stomach while his counterpart beat him with branches. Sound scary????? Well, he loved it!!! The beating of the branches I came to learn is really enjoyable. WHAT?!! Did I just say that?! It's true. What it is is a bunch of smallish branches (with their leaves still attached) tied together, dried, and then dipped in a bucket of warm water. The beater then whacks away at your back, the sticks padded by all the leaves. The leaves are very warm due to sitting in the bucket of warm water warmed in the sauna. The beater can actually whack the beatee pretty hard without it hurting at all. Sometimes we purchase this...hmm, what to call it?...bundle of branches?...and spend time beating eachother's backs, thighs, and feet.

After our three hours we shower, get dressed, and go home. The sauna is very clean (though we all wear our flip flops) and is a normal part of Moldovan life. Many of the saunas get booked up for holiday parties and many people have weekly reservations for the same day and time every week. Unfortunately though the weather is getting warmer and we will soon be ending the weekly tradition for the summer months. However, I hope to build my own sauna back in the States and have weekly sauna "parties".

My Creative Side

Vacation!!!!

So you’ve all heard my theory that to stay sane here you must take vacation every 2-3 months. So far I have succeed in doing this and am happily sane. Shortly after New Years Jason and I hopped a bus to northwestern Ukraine. It was a 12 hour bus ride to Lvov (Ukraine’s 3rd ? largest city). When we stepped off the bus we thought we had mistakenly bought tickets to the North Pole. It was so freaking cold. The thermometers read -15 C (5 F). I suddenly remembered why I avoid traveling in the winter. It took all of our will power to leave the hostel and explore the city. I made by bag considerably lighter by wearing all the clothes I brought yet I still couldn’t stay warm. Every 10 minutes we would have to duck into a store or café to warm ourselves and fight against frost bite and hypothermia. But it was sunny out and the city was beautiful. But we couldn’t take the cold and were ready to move on to Poland after a day and a half. So after a day and a half we caught a mini-bus on the second day to the border. We were told it was quicker to walk across the border than it was to take transport (Jason’s friend took a bus across and waited at the border for 10 hours). And luckily it was really easy to get transport to the border and beyond. And we were even luckier to meet a Canadian guy from Poland, studying in Ukraine. He spoke perfect English and Polish and showed us the quick way through the border- all in all it took 30 minutes. We posed as students. If we would have waited in the line at the border I am sure that today I would no longer be Jennifer the daughter, the sister, the friend, etc but instead Jennifer the popsicle. So we flashed our American passports (it is really an advantage sometimes having one) and walked right through. But we did have a bit of a problem with the border guard not believing that Jason was really Jason. His passport picture doesn’t look too much like him anymore, especially with his beard. It was pretty funny. I think it took 10 minutes to convince the guard that it was him but then he proceeded to say Jason’s name around 10 times in disbelief. But we made it through and the Polish let us in much easier. Our new Canadian-Polish friend was on a break to visit his parents in Poland. And did we luck out. His dad was picking him up at the border and offered to give us a ride to the nearby town where we could catch a train to Krakow. During the 15 minute ride to the train station we got to escape Eastern Europe as we rode in his brand new Chevy truck that was shipped over from North America speaking in English and reminiscing about America and Canada. But then we were thrown back into the cold and Eastern Europe. (half-hearted and sarcastic) hurray.

Our firs step was to get our train tickets. Bummer, we just missed a train and have a 2 hour wait. Not too bad though because it was around 8 and we needed food anyways. So we wandered around for oh 5 minutes before the cold wrestled us into the first cozy looking bar we came across. What better way to warm up than with beer. While sitting there contemplating if a dinner of beer was good enough we looked up at the clock and to our surprise was an hour behind our watches. Crap, Poland was an hour behind Ukraine and Moldova and therefore we had a three hour wait, ugh. So we made the best of it by drinking beer, eating French fries, and experimenting with all the options available on my camera.

Around 10 pm we forced ourselves out of the bar into the cold. We realized we still hadn’t eaten any dinner and were still hungry. The only place we could find open only had snickers, chips, and more beer to offer us. We got 2 of each. So we boarded the train and headed to Krakow. Around 2 am we arrived in my new favorite city. We woke ourselves and went on search of a internet café to see if we had a response and an address from the guy we were to be staying with. It took a while to find but we eventually made it to his place and fell into bed around 3:30am. The next few days were full of adventure. We walked everywhere and had tons of fun.

On our last day we visited Auschwitz, 2 hours outside of Krakow.

My vacation then came to a close and I had to travel back to Lvov to catch my bus back to Moldova. This was a long ordeal that began at 3am and didn’t end ‘til 6am the next day and involved very little sleeping. I had to take many different buses and wait a few hours between each one just to get back to Moldova. But I was greeted by tons of snow!

The Holidays

I survived the holidays! Christmas was spent with a few close friends and New Years I stayed at home with my host family. Both included tons of food and lots of fun. I am happy to report that I got to play lots of games (Scrabble, Taboo, Cribbage, Rummy, etc).

Turkey Feast!! Complete with red and green mashed potatoes!

The stockings I made for everyone. They fit our feet!

A Real Winter

For the past many years, living in Washington, I have never had a real winter. Yeah, maybe when I was a kid we had huge snowfalls but due to global warming, or whatever your personal theory is, it has been a very long time since I have gotten to play in the snow. Let me clarify this. I of course have gone to the mountains every winter of my life (last year being the exception, if only Moldova had mountains… if only). But this is not the same as having multiple days in a row where you step out of your house into your normal everyday world that has been transformed into a white paradise. I think everyone can agree that even the ugliest place on earth instantly becomes beautiful after a heavy snowfall. So, because last year was a crazy warm year I didn’t get to experience the real winters that Moldova has. But finally my wait has paid off, 15 months after my arrival, I get a real winter. The snow started falling in late November, but only flurries. But as soon as December hit BAM we got snow. And since then we have had three big snowfalls. The trend so far is one to two days of snow followed by really cold, SUNNY days. I have never loved Moldova more (except maybe over the summer passing through the sunflower fields.) The thing about the sunny days is that it causes the snow to melt a bit. This of course makes me sad but then night hits and causes it all to freeze up. Some how this process makes the snow last pretty long, HURRAY! But it also makes it very slick outside. (knock on wood but I have yet to fall). Thankfully Peace Corps provides all the volunteers with bright neon green Yak Traks. So not only do we stay upright but we attract everyone’s attention while doing it. Neon green doesn’t exactly blend well with black shoes. But hey, they glow in the dark!!!!

(A side note. Winter left us for a little while last week and the temperatures were quite nice. This however caused all the snow to melt and create a very sloppy, mucky, muddy mess. And I of course continued my morning runs coming home completely covered in mud, something that is very looked down upon in Moldova. It amazes me how Moldovans can stay so clean in such a muddy place. I can’t even walk 100 yards to the bus stop on my tip toes with out covering my shoes with mud and spraying it halfway up the back of pants. But then again, Moldovans are a little crazy when it comes to keeping their shoes clean. I watch many on a regular basis stop at each puddle on their way to slip their hand into the dirty water to clean the mud of their shoes. That’s right, they don’t care about sticking their hand into a mud puddle and wiping the mud off their shoes with their BARE hands as long as their shoes are clean.)

And a funny story. Last Saturday night I had prepared a Mexican meal for my Moldovan friend Maria. Since I don’t like staying out very late and everyone else was drinking except for me I decided to take off around 10:30. Though I have lived in Balti for a year now I still am not quite sure of the bus schedules. There doesn’t exist schedules like in America that say when the bus starts, comes, or finishes its route. This only really poses a problem when I stay out late with friends. Taxis are available and ridiculously cheap for American standards, roughly $2 to go 4 miles, but I still prefer to pay 10 cents for the bus. So, after I left Maria’s I went to the bus stop to wait and see if possibly a bus or routiera (small mini-bus) would pass by. After ten minutes or so I decided I would just flag down a taxi. As I was standing on the edge of the sidewalk trying to get one to stop a car swerved in close to where I was standing and also where lay a huge mud puddle. I knew it was going to hit the puddle and acted accordingly, I took a few steps back. Usually that’s enough, but this time, no! I was completely splattered! And it was more mud than puddle. And to top it off I was wearing light colored khakis. They were covered from the foot to the thigh and my shoes no longer showed any black. This was something that you would see on TV. I wish I could have had some on there with me to appreciate the hilarity of it. And I wish I had taken a picture when I got home because you probably think I am exaggerating a bit but no.

Fitness Club “Jennifer”

That’s right, you read correctly. We named our fitness club after yours truly. It wasn’t my choice and all my protests against went unheard. My counterpart and the girls I had worked with wanted a name to remember me by. What better name than my own. We wrote the project back in June and started our renovations in July. Finally, finally everything was finished two weeks ago and we had our official opening. We invited all the important people- the mayor, PC director, officials from the mayors office, the director from the health center, etc, etc. We cut the ribbon, talked a bit, then had a big masa. I provided chocolate chips cookies and apple cinnamon placinta. My treats got eaten the fastest and everyone loved them best. Of course. The really cool thing about it though is that the village now has a place to work out for cheap without having to travel into the city.

The center was created in a section of the building that our NGO is in. We have one room for aerobics/yoga/etc. and one room with weights, a bicycle, and an elliptical machine. We have about 8 big balls for exercises and two discs full of different aerobics, yoga, pilates, ball work outs, jump rope work outs, etc. So far it has all been very successful and we have had lots of people pay to use it. I use it everyday after work for 1-2 hours. I am hoping to keep my winter weight in check. Especially with all the holiday masas coming up. But we have a group of girls who have volunteered to run the center and in exchange they can use the center for free. I am still so surprised by how successful it has been. I am glad to say that I have contributed something really big to this village and have something tangible to show for my time here.

Vacation (part 1)

I know I went on vacation over a month ago but I have been busy. It takes up a lot of my time to play in the snow, read, knit, work out, etc. So this part is about the first part of my vacation, before I ran the marathon. It all started way back in October, the 29th to be exact….

Our vacation started at 7:00 in the morning on October the 29th. We awoke early to jump on board the 7am bus to Iaşi, Romania. It took us less than 2 hours to reach the border and say goodbye to Moldova for 10 whole days. We would have arrived in Iasi within 3 hours but of course boarder crossing can never be a quick and easy process. Instead you have to disembark on the Moldova side and show the officials that you are only smuggling smîntină (sour cream), cabbage, milk, and brînza (special yummy Moldovan cheese) instead of drugs. I kid you not, that is what people’s luggage was full of. Why pack clothes when you can pack fresh milk from the cow to bring to your relatives in Romania, because Romania obviously doesn’t have milk or cabbage. So anyways, we have to get off the bus again on the Romania side of the border and present our documents and bags again, maybe they don’t trust the Moldovans did a good enough job. We finally arrived in Iasi. Finally. We were on vacation and out of Moldova. Hurray! We celebrated by seeing a movie, in English. I repeat, in English. And t wasn’t some bad Steven Segal movie that they play on the TV here but an actual new, good movie- The Reckoning. Anyone see it? It was good, I recommend it. We also splurged and ate at a Chinese restaurant. Though we regretted it as soon as we bit into our food because of the huge chunk of glass I found in my rice after Jeff had chomped through (and swallowed) something very hard and crunchy. You’d think that would have been the end of our meal. But no. We picked the glass out an continued eating. We are still alive aren’t we. We ended our night early with a 9pm bedtime because we had to be at the bus station by 6am the next morning for our bus to Braşov. We were going to see Dracula!!!

Waking up wasn't such a hassle and making the 6am bus wasn’t so bad either. But the 8 hour ride through the mountains without heat was a killer. We froze!!! The woman in front of us kept yelling at the driver that we were all going to die and muttered to herself almost the entire trip. We made our bags lighter though by putting on all the clothes we brought along, which wasn’t much. In the early afternoon we finally pulled into a dingy bus station and we announced that it was Braşov. I was ready to go home. I had pictured a town like Whistler, Canada. Jeff and Sharon drug me away from the ticket window and we rode into the center of town hoping for something better. It was amazing. Braşov is beautiful!!!! There are tons of old buildings and huge hills around with mountains in the distance.The Brasov sign in the background.

We came to Braşov with the sole purpose of spending Halloween in Dracula land. And of course we made Dracula costumes especially for the occasion. The 30h, or what was left of the day, was spent walking around the town. Annie and Anastasia met up with us and the 31st was spent having fun. First we hiked up the mountain to the big Braşov sign (just like Hollywood).

We could see all of Braşov and beyond up there. Not to mention a bear. I swear to god! And it was less than 50 yards in front of us. It was sleeping though and wouldn’t wake up, no matter how much we yelled at it. We even tried to call it in Romanian, hey, a bear in Romania probably doesn’t speak English. But we could only get it to move a little bit. Just enough to prove it wasn’t dead.

The brown spot in the middle is the bear!!!

So we posed up there with our Dracula capes on then headed down the mountain. Our next stop would be Bran castle, the fake home of Dracula. Some how word got out long ago that the Bran castle is where the Dracula story was born. So tourists flock there instead of the real castle that is 3 hours away. We didn’t have the time to go to the real castle and we heard that the Bran castle might have a Halloween party. But by the time we figured out what bus to take and got there the castle had closed. But we saved ourselves a bunch of money by not going into the castle that I heard wasn’t worth it anyways. SO we headed back to town, put our costumes on and headed out to find a party. We succeeded in finding a couple smoky bars where half of the customers dressed up. All in all it was a fun night!!! Plus, we did eat tons of candy corn! Thanks Mom!

The next day I had to head to Buchareşti to so I could catch my early flight the next morning to Athens for the marathon.