Water Project

We recently wrote a water project for the village school to make the water safer for drinking. You can read about it by clicking here.

Vice President Biden in Moldova

Vice President Biden made a visit to Moldova this week and spoke about the current situation of Moldova's slow, but progressive, transition to a democratic nation since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. This was the first visit to Moldova by an American president or vice-president. You can partially see my head below the "M" in Moldova in the picture above. The main street in the capital city was lined with Moldovan and American flags to welcome in Biden. All of the Peace Corps volunteers in Moldova were invited to stand behind him on stage as he spoke to a large crowd of Moldovans in the capital city. Afterwards, VP Biden and his wife Dr. Jill Biden invited the Peace Corps Volunteers and embassy employees to a private meet-and-greet. After he, his wife, and the ambassador had spoken, one of his secretaries asked all the Peace Corps Volunteers to stand in a group so that he could get a quick picture with us. When he came over, he asked to get in the middle of our huddle and he spoke to us for about 10 minutes -this was cool. I enjoyed him asking us questions about our experience in Moldova and telling us his opinions on the political state of our host country. He spoke a good bit about the importance of empowering women so that human trafficking could be eliminated in Moldova. He also said that Moldova may drop to a "Tier 3" country on the United States' three-tier system of evaluating countries for foreign aid. As of now, Moldova is a Tier 2 country, but is on the borderline of falling to a Tier 3 - if Moldova becomes a Tier 3 country then the United States will cut off all financial aid. VP Biden said that there are three things that the United States won't tolerate and will drop a country to the lower tier: 1) slavery (aka human trafficking), 2) institutional corruption, 3) lack of freedom of the press.

I believe and hope that Moldova will continue to evolve productively and the citizens will continue to have more of their rights respected and legal system improved.

Winter Update

I have now been living in Moldova for over 1.5 years. Wow. It seems like yesterday when I started up this blog in my nice little living room in my old, rented mill house in Columbia, SC. I had no idea what my Peace Corps experience would be like, but I knew I was ready for a new adventure, a new country, a new language, and lots of potatoes.

I could write about how much I've personally changed over the past 1.5 years, but I wouldn't know where to begin. My outlook on most things in life has changed in one way or another. My mind has been stretched on a daily basis, and my patience and open-mindedness tested frequently. I had no idea I would be wearing this much fur. This has been a humbling and educating experience, and I hope I can build on it.

I knew I loved traveling before I came to Peace Corps, but I didn't know how much I would enjoy learning Romanian and seeing a culture from the inside; in other words, not stopping through the capital city for a few days as a tourist. Don't misunderstand me, I love taking a few days vacation to visit cool places, but there is something more gratifying about speaking the language and having locals take pride in the fact that you are really trying to understand their culture. With that said, I am beginning to study Spanish. When I return from Moldova in early August, I plan to live in southern Mexico for 3-4 months with a Spanish-speaking host family on an organic farm. I am contacting farms through WWOOF - World Wide Organization of Organic Farms - which is an online community of farms that offer to host volunteers to work in exchange for free room and board.

If everything goes as planned, I'll soon be having to refuse excessive amounts of Mexican tequila instead of Russian vodka! Paz mis amigos!