A feel for my life...

Things have been interesting. That is the best way I can put my thoughts right now..

Officially the exciting news for me is I was sworn in as a volunteer in the country of Moldova on August 5th! It was a very exciting time for me.. Many tears were shed. The most exciting aspect was doing the oath, because the oath we do is the same oath the president of the US takes himself before he is sworn in! Isn't that a story to tell :)

It was pretty difficult for me on this day as well because I had to leave the family I had been living with for 2 months during language training. But it feels amazing to hold a conversation in romanian now and to know that I have gained an amazing family and new friends in the village of Stauceni. When I left my host mom cried, which of course made me cry, but it feel awesome that she cared that much. The night before my family threw a dinner for me to say goodbye, they cooked all my favorite moldovan food and we celebrated with wine. I bought my host family all gifts. For my host mom I bought a mask for her face, she never takes time to relax so I thought it'd help, for my host sister I bought Cool Water perfume, she loved mine so I thought she would be very happy(and she was), my host brother I bought this awesome digging kit(he loved it), and for my host dad we get along great because of our love for hot sauce so I want and bought him so american style hot sauce! Overall an amazing last night with them.. Luckily we go back for 2 weeks of training in Sept-Oct and I get to stay with them again, plus they invited me for holidays and whenever I want to visit!

Transition to new village:

I am currently living in the Village of Iargara Moldova. Its a village of 4000 people. My host family is decent. Host mom is a little over bearing and tells me alot of werid stories, and wants to tell me all the time how great her son is in English. Guess she likes to brag :)... And she loves to be noisy, I went to dinner with my work partner and she asked me several times if I talked about her family and what I talked about. As for everything else with her,the cooking is pretty good, I havent been to sick in my village yet. So far I have been sick around 5 times. Moldova is a very dirty place and its very easy to get sick, and I have chipped my tooth now 3 times on their food, because they cook everything together, bones and all, and you dont know what your biting into.. Luckily the dentist is great!

In my family I have a host mom, dad, brother and a sister. Hosts mom is Domana Vera 54, Host dad is Demnitru 47,Ana is 14, and Maxim is 17. Maxim speaks pretty good english if I talk slow to him, Ana speaks a little english. And we have every animal known to man besides a cat :( at our house. Host dad doesnt really talk to me, I am not really sure why, its not normal in Moldova. My host dad in Stauceni talked with me for about 3 hours every evening. However my host family here is huge into drinking. They want to drink for breakfast, lunch and dinner.. However I get the excuse that I am a Peace Corps volunteer and I dont want to drink and plus I would get in huge trouble if I drank from 8am-5pm. Thank goodness for this rule because its just not appealing to me. 

To describe my host sister, she works alot around the house and is pretty self sufficient.. however every time I do something she asks me "why?" For instance if I am full and I dont want to eat any more she will ask me "but why." And if I walk fast, she asks me why, If I am tired she ask me why, If I want to shower she asks me why. LOL

As for my host brother.. he is to him self or with his friends. He is pretty open to talking to me as the days go on. We get along well with this space :)

His friend(our neighbor) has a huge crush on me, pretty sure because he wants me to take him to America(not going to happen).

To describe my home.. It kind of has two levels: the first level is the bedrooms, and winter kitchen, the second level is my host brothers room and the outside kitchen for summer time. We dont have a place to wash dishes so we do it in a bucket. My host mom didnt believe in soap until I moved in, and I expressed my concern for my health and how important this is. Can you imagine cooking and then not washing your dishes with soap?? I was wondering why everything was so greasy looking! And they cook with so much oil over here its crazy! I had to go to the doctor recently, I am having gal bladder problems from all the oil in the foods.. May have to get it taken out... Lovely! But needless to say we have soap in the house now and my host mom makes sure she does the dishes with soap, or I just do them myself. Peace Corps also gave me a water distiller because the water is really bad here in Moldova.. My language instructor lives here as well and she wont even drank the water its so awful. Lets just say after its done distilling there is this nasty cottage cheese stuff in my distiller left over.. Yummy!

My room is pretty decent.. I have internet in my room, my host mom doesn't make me pay for it, because I am teaching her kids english, so thats always a plus. I have a bed, cupboards and a dresser, along with a computer desk. However in my room are many creatures- spiders, centipeids, the works.. gross!! But I have adjusted if you can believe that for the people who know my hatred for bugs!

And the rest of our house is mess right now, everything is under construction- its common in Moldova during this time for your house to be getting new materials so my family is redoing about everything in our house.. Which can be a really awesome things, it will be interesting to see when its done.

As for my daily activities.. I work at Pentru Tine and how I get there is by good old walking(which I walk 30 minutes to work on dirt roads as I watch goats, pigs, dogs, chicken, geese, all animals cross my path), there are many horse and buggies around here for transporation, and many old ladies that sit outside in the morning gossiping as I walk by all shouting buna dimensata(which means good morning).. And it rained all day today so imagine the roads. muddy to say the least or what we call here GLUD

My place in the community is interesting, I am an alien.. Moldovan people dont believe in anything cold... So I am weird because I drank cold water, use a fan in my room, go to work with my hair wet, ride in a car with the window down.. All these things are looked at to make you sick here in Moldova.. But I wont budge on these, and they have adjusted to that.. However my host mom FREAKS when I use a fork to eat, she says your in Moldova quit it! And If I dont eat everything at one time she is trying to shovel food on my plate, I usually just ignore her at this point acting like I dont understand :).. I dont want to gain 100 pounds! Also I am werid because I like privacy, werid because of the clothes I wear, werid because I shower daily.. Werid in every way! :) Oh and get this when I run for exercise my family talks non stop about it, and how I need to get my host sister to run so she loses weight and they say this in front of her(how rude, right?) So I invite her to run if she wants...

Theres a taste of my daily life :)

As for my work... Let me take a deep breath before I right this... :)

Pentru Tine: Is a center for children who have no place to go after school. We provide this service because most of these children's families are alcoholics or drug addicts, prostitutes, in prison  and most of the children don't want to be at home. Also most of them don't get fed at home, and/or their parents don't want to pay any attention to them. So we provide them with activities such as: soccer, basketball, board games, painting, arts and crafts, etc.

How I feel about working there is another story. I feel worthless most days, because its very unstructured over here, and nothing is every documented or planned.  Yesterday was fulfilling though because I had a conversation with a 12 year old girl about her brother who is in prison for beating someone up, with my little romanian we were able to talk about her anger towards him and how she feels about drinking.. So that was productive.. 

However my frustration with Moldova is seeing four year old children drink alcohol like it is water! I grit my teeth and it hurts so bad to see this! I can't sit there and lecture them because it would ruin myself in my community. So I am going to take the approach on doing a presentation on the affects of alcohol and drugs in the ways that young children can understand. 

Theres many things in my village that I want to help with, but recognizing this is their way of life here, and I have to approach it in a healthy and productive way. Life is much different in America, and all I can say is I am thankful for the things I have back home and pray I will make a difference here.