Cum eu fac dus

My host partner in the village (the person who applied to Peace Corps to host me as a volunteer) owns this building in the photo. She runs multiple organizations out of it, so I do some of my work out of here. It's got a neat history, because thirty years ago it was the central office for the Soviet military in this raion (county) of Moldova.The center of my village. My office is the building to the left, the mayor's office is up ahead, and there is a small park and a community well to the right.


I'm learning new words every day, however no one speaks clean romanian. In the village, we speak a mixture of romanian, russian, ukranian, and moldovan (moldovan is essentially romanian, but has developed into a different dialect over the years). From what I've heard, when I visit the country of Romania, where they speak clean romanian, they probably won't understand half of what I say.

Our garden behind our house. You name it, we've got it growing.
A view of my village from the top of a hill.

Another pic of my village. Rumor has it we have about 2,800 people living here.

Here's the front gates to our market, which comes once a week on Sundays. Most everyone goes to buy food, goods, etc that they'll need for the week. It's a pretty cool experience for me on Sundays, because everyone goes and comes to the market on horse drawn carts. It reminds me of what I imagine America to be a hundred years ago.
Where the magic happens.

Grapes hanging in my face when I walk out my front door.

One of my neighbors. Typical looking village house.
Another typical house.


My water source.
The walk to my well isn't far.

To the right, you'll see a soba used to burn wood to heat the water for bathing. The process is pretty simple: fetch a few buckets of water from the well, burn some wood in the soba to heat the water, scoop the warm water into the red bucket to the left, and bucket bathe in the tub.

We, like many traditonal Moldovan families, have two houses. "Casa mica" and "casa mare", which translates to big house and small house. This is a picture of casa mica in which the family lives, eats, and spends most of their time.
This is "casa mare", which is the guest house that I live in. It's bigger than the family's home, and contains the nice furniture, plates, glasses, etc. reserved for guests.


One of the rooms in "casa mare" where I live.

My room.

Inside casa mica, the family's home. The big blue thing is a soba which is used to heat the home during winter by burning wood or coal.


Another pic of living room/dining room/main room. To the right, you can see another soba used to heat the house for winter. This soba is built with a bedding area on top so people can sleep directly on the heat.Another pic of the main room of casa mica.


Eu sper ca toti sint bine. Pace. - I hope that everyone is good. Peace.

Acum, eu sint voluntar.

Some darn good looking Volunteers being sworn in for two years of service.

Accepting my Oath of Service from the Country Director of Peace Corps Moldova.

Giving a presentation to all of the host families.

Some fellow Volunteers wearing traditional Moldovan outfits but acting American.

My buddy Neal and I with our host families on our last day with them.

We had a big celebration for our former host families to show them thanks for putting up with us for the past 8 weeks during our pre-service training. Two weeks leading up to the party, we practiced dancing the hora (traditonal Moldovan dance) with our Romanian teachers, and we presented it to all of the host families. There's two tall dudes in the video. I'm the tall dude on the right at the beginning of the dance.

Tomorrow or the next day I'll post some pics of my new village and house. Fii sanatos.

Horse carts everywhere

After a big farewell party for our host families, I am finally settled in to my new village. The village I live in has about 3,000 people, and it's about four hours from the capital. In Moldova, it seems the further you are from the capital the more rural and traditional the villages get. For example, in my last village of Milestii Mici, I only saw one horse cart being used for transportation. Here, I pass one on the road every 5 minutes or so. I played baseball with some village kids yesterday, and it was evident that a lot of people in my village speak russian. Some even speak ukranian. However, everyone knows romanian, so I'm going to keep studying romanian for the next year or so. Maybe I'll study russian after that.

I will be collaborating with two organizations (made up of two people): one agricultural and rural business and the other community development. Basically, there are two people in my village who are the "shakers and movers". They both own a lot land, know everyone, and give a lot back to the village by running these two organizations. For now, I pretty much hang out with them and go around my village getting to know people. The language barrier is tough again, because the dialect and speed of their language is lot different here than it was in my last village. However, they seem to love me, and I'm still being fed every waking minute of the day.

For now, I've got limited internet access, but that should change in the next week. I've got some good pics and videos, so stay tuned.

Thanks for all the support and kind words. I miss everyone, and I wish you all could be here to experience this culture. It's great.

Millions of peaches

Boardwalk out to a community well in the field. Every time I see it, it reminds me of the boardwalks out over the marshes back home at the beach.

Picking peaches with the family after a storm.

A road in the village through the orchards.

Work some, eat some.

There's plenty more where that came from.

From left to right: Neighbors Anna and Domnul Vasile, host mom Doamna Tatiana, and me.

After a rainstorm. That's my village in the horizon.

Our basement is starting to fill up for winter. Most of what you see is compote, which is boiled fruit juice and sugar. For every fruit we harvest, we add another flavor of compote.

Another pic of the basement. The barrels are for homemade wine.

Jennifer, here's your pics of sunflowers. Next year I'll get some pics while they're in full bloom.

I took a long hike with my buddy Neal over a few hills until we could see Chisinau, the capitol, which is in the background.

Vineyards all the way to the horizon.

Inside my Romanian language class. 4 hours a day, every day.

Central Market in Chisinau, the capitol of Moldova.