Buddies

Amy (a fellow volunteer) and I.

Party!

Some of the OM judges celebrating with wine and bread after the competition.

Customer's Not Always Right

Me washing that stupid towel before the towel-swap. RIDICULOUS!!

Fi'ty Cent

A few more pictures of my weekend. This was a group of especially creative kids. All props and costumes were made by them. The kid painted brown in the middle is supposed to be Fifty Cent, the rapper. Ha ha ha! It was pretty funny.

What Up, Yo?

Well, I'm back from my weekend trip to the capital city of Chisinau where I was a judge in the Odyssey of the Mind competition. For those of you who have never heard of this, which is probably most of you, it is a competition for youth, where various teams of children use creative approaches to solve a variety of problems or scenarios presented to them. They incorporate drama, music, dance, and art into the presentation, and it was very entertaining. We as judges were supposed to be fun and a little crazy, and the crazy part wasn't much of a stretch for me. In this picture, Adam, a fellow volunteer, and myself, pose with our crazy hats, and best gangster wanna be looks. I had a lot of fun, but it was also quite the series of mishaps, that only I could have had. I'll try to summarize as going into detail would just take too long. As a bit of background to the adventures that were to come, my Moldovan counterpart had asked me to do her a favor, since I was going to be in the capital city. My mission, should I choose to accept it, was to purchase a specific ink toner for my NGO's printer/fax/scanner. Not only did my NGO give me the address to this place, and 200 lei (the equivalent of about 20 US dollars, but a LOT here) to purchase the toner, but they also called the store in advance to ensure that they had the toner and would be expecting me. How much more simple could it be, right? OK. So, I got into Chisinau in the late morning with a fellow Peace Corps volunteer (actually, Adam, the guy in the picture). He agreed to go with me to find this computer store, since I am known for my lack of directional sense, and sometimes for my lack of just plain common sense. HA! Well, I figured it was going to be a piece of cake when we found the correct street after only twenty minutes or so, of walking. The problem? Turns out we were walking the wrong direction on the street. We didn't realize this, of course, until we had walked the majority of the street in the the wrong direction. So, turning around and actually making it to the store, took twice as long. We probably walked for three or four miles. Finally, we found the store. It was a big computer store, and I fumbled through explaining to them that I was there to buy the new toner. I took the old one out of the bag that it was wrapped in and handed it to the clerk. My counterpart and I had taped it really good because it had been leaking a bit of ink. Well, by the time, the clerk had unwrapped all the tape, it was obvious that the entire aparatus, toner and cartridge holder were covered in leaked ink. The clerk explained to me that I was going to need to buy an entire new cartridge which was over twice as much as the toner itself. Of course, I only had the money from my NGO, and my bank account from Peace Corps was not be updated for the month, until two or three days from then. So, I called my counterpart, and asked her if she wanted me to buy the 535 lei cartridge and toner, or not. After talking on the phone, to the clerk herself, my partner asked me if I would mind buying the apparatus, and being reimbursed at a later date. So, I took some money out of the bank, and borrowed a bit more from Adam, and went through the process of buying the toner. It took forever, because for some reason, you have to complete an enormous amount of paperwork to make the purchase. Adam compared it to taking out a mortgage on your home, and he wasn't too far off. They were asking crazy quesitons like, "What is the phone number of your NGO's bank?" Considering that I don't even know the phone number of my own house here, I was in trouble! Many phone calles, and much confusion later, I finally had the toner, and the receipt. Whew! What a hassle! Then, Adam and I stopped by the shoe repair shop to drop off the pair of winter boots I had bought here and that were falling apart for the second time after only a month or so of having them repaired before. The repairman said they would be ready two days from then, which was the day I was leaving. I figured I could stop by before I left and pick them up. Then, we ran a few more errands and headed back to the Peace Corps office to meet up with other volunteers and hang out. In the evening, we headed out to dinner, and then to the cheapest hotel we knew of, to reserve several rooms. Turns out, when we got to the hotel, that they were reluctant to give us rooms, as there was a large group coming in the next day that had reserved rooms, and we would need to be checked out by nine the next morning. Which meant that we would have to find a different place to stay the following evening. We assured the clerk that we would be out in time, and she grudgingly gave us rooms for the evening. The next morning, we were up and dressed in time to leave. I cleaned my boots with one of the room towels, as my boots were muddy, and clean shoes are a must in Moldova. Granted, the little towel got muddy, but it was nothing some bleach wouldn't take care of. However, when we were getting ready to head downstairs to check out, the maid took a look in our room, and found the towel I had used. She was very angry with me, and told me that I was not allowed to leave until I either paid for the towel or washed it (I assumed that was her job, but here in Moldova, the customer is NOT always right!) There was no way I was going to pay for a little mud, so I told her to give me some soap, and then I headed into the shared hall bathroom to scrub the towel in the sink. I was running late for my Odyssey of the Mind competition, and wasn't sure I would have time to make it there if I spent too much time scrubbing. So, after scrubbing it mostly clean, for good measure, I took the offered towel of a volunteer who was staying in another room on that floor, wet it, and handed it to the lady. The other volunteer took my towel, and hid it under his bed. That threw her off my trail long enough for me to get downstairs. As I was exiting the hotel, the security guard called me back inside, and I was sure the cleaning lady had figured out that I had swapped towels on her. Instead, the lady at the front desk began to rudely demand my room key. I explained to her that I had left it upstairs with the cleaning lady, and she yelled at me that it was my job to bring that key downstairs, not the cleaning lady's. At this point, I'm getting impatient, cause I'm not sure I'm going to make it to OM on time. So, I ask her is she really wants me to go all the way upstairs for a key that will surely be brought down shortly by the cleaning lady anyway. She says rudely, "No. Just go!" So, off I go to catch a bus to the center of town. Once on the bus, I go in my back pocket for money, and what do you think I find there in that back pocket of mine? Embarassingly enough, the HOTEL KEY!!!!!! Yep, I thought I had left it with the cleaning lady, but in the hurry to leave I had actually stuffed it in my back pocket. So, I had to get off at the next stop, and run the several blocks back to the hotel with all my baggage in tow, to give the key back to lady at the front desk. Embarassing, but at that point, all I could think about was getting to OM on time. Fortunately, I did make it there on time, and the day was long, but a lot of fun. The teams of kids competing were very entertaining and creative, and it was great to hang out with all my Peace Corps buddies, and to make friends with Moldovans who were helping to judge the competition. All in all, a wonderful time. That evening, everybody decided to head to a nice restaurant to celebrate and hang out. It wasn't until about eleven o'clock that evening, while hanging out at the restaurant, that I realized I had left the printer toner at the building where we had the OM competition! Yep, that would be the 535 lei toner that I had had so much trouble procuring, and to make matters worse, when I called one of the few people left at that building on the outskirts of the city, she told me that she had looked everywhere and could not find it!!! I began to get nervous and worried. That was money from my work, the receipts were in the bag, I didn't have enough money in my account to buy more, and without it, my work could not use their printer at all! AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! I was already tired, and to add this to the looong day was the last straw. I was done with partying for the night, as all I could think about was the missing toner, and the frustrations that had been piling up in the day. I decided that my best plan of action was to get some rest, and then head back to that building early in the morning. I had a meeting the next day at 11:00, and was hoping, praying that I would find that toner before then. So, I said goodbye to all the volunteers who were planning on partying till the early morning, and then found a hotel room, and went to sleep. Next morning, I headed back to that building. Fortunately, it was open, even though it was Sunday, and most places are closed. I walked in, and asked the first cleaning lady I found whether or not she knew anything about my lost toner. She said she didn't, but directed me to another room, and another cleaning lady. I went through my whole explanation again, not expecting anything but a sad shake of the head. That's why I was so surprised, when the lady told me that she knew where my toner was!!!!! Sure enough, she led me directly to it, sitting in the exact room I had been judging in the day before! Never, was I so happy or relieved! I didn't even mind so much when the dogs outside almost ate me, and was grateful I had the toner to swing in their direction, and keep them from quite reaching my leg to taking a chunk out of it. I ran away with a smile on my face even while they chased after me for half a block with teeth bared. Well, I guess this turned out to be the long version despite my best intentions. I can't help it that I'm wordy. The last mishap to befall me ocurred when I went to pick up my winter boots. Turns out, the guy that repaired them, had gone home for the day, and would not be back for two days. So, I guess my boots are still sitting somewhere on one of his locked shelves in Chisinau, waiting for my return, which won't be for another two weeks. Oh well, at least I have my toner cartridge. All in all, I had a really fun time this weekend, but I was glad to get back to my own village, my own house, and especially, my own bed, and I was more than relieved to hand the toner over to my counterpart, and be rid of it for good!

Overdue

Yes, I know. It's been a while since I last posted a blog on here. I guess I was waiting for something really exciting to happen, or some sort of amazing inspiration to hit me. But as a friend recently told me, it doesn't have to be anything ground breaking. It's just good to let people know what's going on in my life. So, here's my long overdue entry about everyday life here in Moldova. The weather's actually warming up, which is good and bad. Good, because I can start running again without getting frostbite, and bad because I now have to wade through the streets to get anywhere as all the snow is melting into small rivers that turn every unpaved road into a muddy, slushy obstacle course. Quite the challenge though, and I'm always up for a challenge. I have been teaching more English classes, which, although that's not necessarily the main reason I came to Moldova, for the time being, it's a great way to get to know some of the kids in the community, and connect with Recea. I am also going to more meetings (hosted by my NGO, or by the mayor's office, or by local businesses). Although I don't always understand everything that's going on in them, it again helps with the integration process, and can't hurt in my language learning. A few other things that I am about to check out are:

• The school here has a center for kids that the last volunteer here helped open, but it has been shut down for several months now, and I'm going to look into opening it again, as it's got some great resources for the youth of the community.
• There is a project that was in the works (again when the last volunteer, Christy, was here) to bring running water to this village. Somehow, it has been put on a back burner, and I would like to help get the ball rolling with that project if I can.
• My local counterpart has a dream to open a cross-generational center in which older people can come with needs that they have, and the youth of the community can help meet those needs. It would also be a chance to bridge the gap between generations, and to offer helpful resources to elderly that cannot afford some of the necessities of life.
• I will also be assisting this year in putting together a week long camp for girls ages 17-20 something. This camp is chock full of activities that help them start thinking about their futures and how they can impact, not only their own lives, but the future of their communities and their country. Then next year, I'm supposed to take over the whole camp project as the volunteer that's doing it this year will be leaving in August. So, that should be interesting as well.

These are some of the bigger ideas in the works right now. They'll take time, but hey, I've got two years, right?;) Overall, things are going very well. The amazement of being here still hasn't worn off. I am just soaking it all up. There's so much beauty to be found, so much humor to be enjoyed, and so many relationships to build, oh yeah, and work to do too. he he he........

Today I had an English class with three nine year old girls. They were so cute. I was teaching them the alphabet, and common greetings. They really liked "Hi!" and "Hello!", but weren't so thrilled with "it's a pleasure". When they say it, it comes out like "eets e plee jur." ADORABLE!!! Then there was "I am from Moldova. Where are you from?". Which kept coming out "I om frum is Moldova. Wot is your from?" I had to work hard at keeping a straight face. I'm sure they were thinking the same thing about my Romanian.

I also did laundry today. I know that sounds about as mundane a task as possible, but I am always so amazed by how time-consuming a process doing laundry by hand is! I barely got the majority done within my two and a half hour time limit (I had a meeting to be at). I didn't even wash all that much! Some socks and underwear, two pairs of jeans, and a pair of PJ bottoms, and it took me two and a half hours!!!!!! Crazy huh?!? Be grateful for your washing machines and dryers. You can have clean, dry clothes in what? An hour, maybe an hour and a half? And it'll still take another day or two for my clothes to dry!!! I'm not complaining. I actually like toughing it a bit (and this is nothing compared to volunteers in other countries), but just wanted to give all you stateside folks something to be grateful for the next time you are dreading doing the laundry in your automatic machines.

This past weekend I went with my host mother, into the city of Balti to celebrate her grandson's fifth birthday. It was fun to spend time with her family. Their pictures are on this blog: Loretta, Vitali, Doina and Vlad. They're good people. Then, the next day, I hung out with some of the volunteers in the city of Balti, and we had an unofficial chocolate fest. That was a lot of fun too. I am all about the chocolate as most of you already know, and there is some good chocolate to be had here in Moldova if you know where to look, and what to look for. :)

This coming weekend I'll be going into the capital city of Chisinau for a youth competition I am judging at, and a meeting the next day for a peer support group I have joined. It'll be good to help out with these programs, and to see other volunteers, but I really am getting to the point where I look forward to coming back to my village, my house, my room, my bed.:) I guess I must be settling in or something.

Well folks, I hope I haven't bored you with all the everyday mundanes. I'll make sure to update this more frequently so I don't have to throw it all into one blog. As always, I look forward to your everyday updates to me, and I miss you all. Keep the emails coming, and feel free to comment on this blog site as well.

Till the next time, enjoy what you've been blessed with, and savor the moments. I think life is about the moments and I wish you some very wonderful ones!:)

The Gas Chamber

Well if this doesn't qualify as a Moldovan Adventure, I don't know what does: Today started out pretty much like every other day here in Recea. I woke up around 8:30 or 9, and lay in bed for about an hour trying to mentally work myself into getting up and getting ready for the day. Finally, around ten (I know, how lazy am I? But I work late so it all balances out in the end, OK?) I decided I couldn't stall any longer and HAD to get up. I went outside to use the outhouse, and noticed that the pig (its pen is right by the outhouse) that usually squeals its morning greetings to me as I make my outhouse run, was unusually silent this morning. I looked in on her, and she was just laying there looking at me. She hadn't even eaten her breakfast, and I started to worry that she was sick. I went in and informed my hostmom that, although I'm no pig expert, our pig was acting strange. She concurred that she had noticed the pig wasn't her normal self either, and decided we'd better get medicine for her (we had to butcher our last pig not too long ago, because it had gotten sick, and the vet said if we butchered it before he got a fever, the meat would still be edible as it would mean the meat itself was not infected. Sounds a little suspect to me, but I did eat some of the meat and I'm still alive, so maybe there was something to that after all. Anyways, that was a really long side note. Sorry. On with the story). I volunteered to go to the animal pharmacy, and set out on a morning adventure to find this place. It took a bit of walking, slipping and sliding on the icy roads, slushing through the muddy side routes, asking for directions, and backtracking, but I finally found the place, and bought the medicine. By the time I got back, and had breakfast, there was no time for my daily exercises. I'd like to say I was disappointed, but honestly I was more relieved than anything as I was feeling lazy anyway. So, I got ready for the day and then headed to the NGO that I work with. My counterpart, and her colleague were planning on going into the bigger city of Balts for the day to run some errands, so I was left in charge. Basically, my job was to monitor the computers that the kids payed to play computer games on. When the time they had paid for was up, I would tell them and make sure they stopped. Simple enough, right? Well, you'd think so anyway. So, everything was going pretty well for a while. Except for the three or four hyperactive boys that were always there when they weren't at school. These boys are funny, but also low-level juvenile delinquents in my opinion. They like to talk to me about America, and ask about English words, but they also like to see how much they can get away with, especially when they think I'm not looking. They always try to sneak onto the computers and play games that they haven't paid for. So, I spent three or four hours telling the same kids over and over to get off the computers, and to leave if they weren't going to pay, and to stop saying those words in English because they're really bad and offensive, and no, they don't need to know what they mean, and no, I'm not going to spell it for them, and stay away from the computers, and so on and so forth. I was getting tired, and my patience was wearing thin. Every so often, someone would come in to use the internet or the printer, and I would clumsily converse with them in Romanian, and try to help them out. Around five in the evening, a guy came in who wanted to burn music from one CD to another. I tried to help him, but I'm just so darn computer illiterate!!!! So, for about an hour, we struggled with trying to figure this out. The whole time, kids are coming in and out, playing computer games, watching other kids playing computer games, and just hanging out. Six-ish, I was getting tired, but finally getting the hang of this CD burning thing, when I started coughing a little. At first, I didn't think anything of it. Then, I heard another kid coughing. I started getting a strong tickle in my throat, and was coughing a bit harder. Then I realized more kids were coughing. Suddenly, everyone was coughing, and the tickle in my throat had grown to a constant sandpapering sort of feel, and I couldn't stop coughing. The guy I was helping was coughing too, and he was also sneezing a lot. It started getting harder to breathe, and all the kids were experiencing similar symptoms. Then my nose was running, and then pouring and then gushing, and my coughing was getting so strong that I was almost dry heaving. The whole room had turned into a coughing, hacking, sneezing, wheezing frenzy in a matter of five or ten minutes, and it was only getting worse by the second. At first I thought maybe there was some problem with the soba, and some sort of invisible ash particles had blown into the room when kids were walking through the hallway and into the room. But I didn't see any ash anywhere in the air. Then I thought maybe it was carbon monoxide or something similar, because I've heard that sobas can sometimes let out excessive amounts of carbon monoxide. But whenever I've heard of carbon monoxide poisonings, symptoms seem to be more headache and dizziness-related, not the respiratory symptoms that we were all experiencing. The dillema was that in order to get outside, we had to pass through another room, a looooong hallway, go down two flights of stairs and through another little hallway before we could get to the door leading outside. And the room and hallway we had to go through had an even higher concentration in the air of whatever was giving us these symptoms in the first place!!! I went around to see if there were any windows we could open, but they had all been pounded and then taped shut in order to keep the cold winter winds out. That was when I realized that I had been given keys that morning to all the doors, and there was a locked door next to us that led onto a periculous second story ice-encrusted balcony. So, I got the keys and started trying them in the lock. But I was coughing so hard (almost to the point of hurling at that point), that I couldn't get the key to work. Finally, I handed it over to the guy I had been helping earlier. He wasn't having any more luck than me, and every time he sneezed (this is gross, so don't read it if you're easily disgusted), his nose erupted, and he would cough harder. Meanwhile, the kids are still trying to play their computer games while they're hacking away. They were pulling their sweaters up around their mouths and nose to filter the air, but still trying to get their money's worth of computer games. Some of them are such computer game addicts, it's amazing. So, while the one guy was trying to unlock the door, I decided to venture the other way, and see if I could air the room out by opening all the doors to the rooms and hallway that eventually led to outside. In the next room, and the hallway, the airborne whatever it was was much stronger, and by the time I made it through that room, down the looooong hallway, down the two flights of stairs and outside, I was on the verge of throwing up from coughing so hard. The air was so much easier to breathe outside. So, I stood there for a few seconds to gulp some fresh air, and decided that I needed to go back in and make all the kids evacuate the building until we could figure out what was going on. As I was getting ready to go back in and up, I heard footsteps pounding down the stairs, and five or six kids came tearing out of the door with their turtlenecks pulled up around their faces, and coughing like ashmatic fifty year smokers with bronchitis. When I got back up to the room, again coughing and hacking away, I noticed that the guy I had given the keys to, had finally gotten the door open, and almost everybody who had not already gotten out the other way, had poured out onto the balcony, and they were all inhaling the fresh winter air, and trying to get their coughing under control. That was when my counterpart and colleague walked in, and they too were coughing like crazy, and looking very concerned. A few minutes later three policemen showed up. Apparently, what had happened was that several juvenile delinquents, deciding that they had nothing better to do, opened a gas nozzel (what kind of gas? I'm still not very clear on that detail), and flooded the building with this mysterious gas. As we all inhaled it, we started developing the respiratory problems described above. The police questioned the kids who had been at the NGO, and ascertained that it was two boys in particular who were responsible. All in all, quite an ordeal, and my throat is still raw and burning from it, five or six hours later. Hope I don't start growing strange tumors, or losing my hair or anything. We closed the center early and headed home because even after airing the place out, it was still difficult to be inside without going into coughing fits and spasms. Well, that was my excitement for the day, and like I said before, I think it qualifies as a Moldovan Adventure. Glad you could all share it with me, but be glad it was by email and not in person. :) Don't worry, I'm fine now, but it was pretty bizarre when I was in the middle of it.