Timp de patru luni

I've looked back and realized that all of my blog posts express how I love living in Moldova. To be fair to the grand ol' USA, here's some things I miss from back home, aside from the obvious like spending time with my family and friends:

- thick, soft, and long mattresses
- running water
- toilets
- indian food, italian food, seafood, mexican food, and all kinds of food that I took for granted, especially fish
- people smiling, waving, and throwing the bird or peace sign
- being around a university campus
- microbrewed beer, specifically ales (nothing but lagers in Moldova)
- playing golf and tennis
- hiking in the mountains (hopefully next year I'll hike the Carpathians in Transylvania, Romania)
- voicing my opinion about anything without a language barrier
- being sarcastic or telling or a joke without a language barrier
- stand up comedians
- live bands
- smooth, paved roads
- tailgating for college football
- roadtrips
- and last, but certainly not least, the Atlantic Ocean

piaţa Cotovei

Most small villages have a market once a week. Larger villages or towns may a have a market every day, but my village and my neighboring village of Cotova only go on Sundays. Here's some pics of my neighboring village's market, which is about 4 km from me.

Buy what you need for a week, because they'll pack up until next Sunday.

Classic Russian car with a watermelon on the roof. These little cars are probably half of the cars you see on the road. I'm buying one when I get back to the States. A green one.

Cotova's market is set up in the village center, near the mayor's office.

Another pic of the market in the center. Notice the statue of Lenin still standing in the background. The Lenin statue is interesting, because ironically (or not) it stands in front of an abandoned Soviet building.

Doing business like it's their job, because it is their job.

The horses pull the carts to the center, and then the owners tie the horses in a nearby field to graze for the day.

Dăti-mi mai ieftin, vă rog - Give it to me cheaper, please.

One thing that was difficult to learn in Moldova was buying everything in grams/kilograms. In America, everything is either pre-packaged or in pounds (produce). In Moldova, everything is weighed, so you have to tell them how many grams/kilograms of something you want. For example, the first time I went to buy some rice I looked for the typical 5 pound bag we would have in America. Of course they didn't have it, but instead the lady asked me how many kilograms I wanted. First, I had no idea how many "kilograms" I wanted. Secondly, my Romanian was horrible back then, so for all I knew she could have been asking me how much my first born child was going to weigh.

This isn't the market, but it's the back patio at my work partner's house. Not sure exactly what happens next. I've got a feeling I'll be eating a lot of pumpkin placinta (placinta is a national dish that is similiar to a pie/pastry filled with apples, potatoes, cabbage, pumpkin, etc)

Proiect la cimitirul din Zgurita

Here's what wikipedia has to say about my village:

"Zguriţa or Zguritsa (Yiddish: זגוריצה, Russian: Згурица) is a commune in Drochia district, Moldova, composed of a single village, Zguriţa. It was founded in 1853 on an area of over 1,000 acres rented by Jewish settlers in Bessarabia. It was the last Jewish agricultural settlement in Moldova. In 1878 the new Jewish owner canceled the lease of the estate and Zguritsa lost its status as a Jewish agricultural colony. From 1890 to 1903 further Jewish settlement in Zguritsa was prohibited by virtue of the May Laws issued on May 3, 1882.

In 1897 Zguritsa's Jewish population was 1,802, comprising 85 percent of the total population. Following the First World War, the village fell under Romanian control. Agrarian reform in Romania in 1922 granted plots of land to 150 Jews of Zguritsa. In 1925 the 193 members of the local loan fund included 40 farmers, 25 artisans, and 113 tradesmen. In 1930 there were 2,541 Jews in Zguritsa (83.9% of the total population), supporting a kindergarten and an elementary school both of the Zionist Tarbut organization.

In 1940, the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia as the Moldavian SSR, closing privately-owned businesses, and religious schools. The agricultural community was collectivized. A year later, pro-Nazi Romanian forces reoccupied the village. On July 3, 1941, Jews who did not flee were rounded up and deported to Transnistria, where most of them died of starvation and disease.

Today, the population of the village is largely Moldovan, with some Russians and Gypsies. The Jewish cemetery is in ruins, and the former Tarbut school was expanded as a public school. "

We did a project to clean up this cemetery this past weekend. It is one of the only few Jewish cemeteries in Moldova. It was my buddy Justin's project, so he did all of the organizing. He got several PC volunteers to come stay at his place for the weekend, and he invited a Jewish organization to come out for the day and help us out. About 10 ten girls from the capitol showed up, and we worked for several hours cleaning the place up. It's going to take a lot of more work, but we made a good start by cutting lots of limbs down that were hanging on the tombstones.

A few PC Volunteers and friends hanging out before we started working.

When we got to the cemetery we realized there was more work than we anticipated.

Most of these stones date back to the 1800's. All of the script is written in Hebrew until you get to the mid 1940's. You can see on the graves when the Soviet regime starting impacting the community, because the script changed over from Hebrew to the Cyrillic alphabet from the Russian language.

Here you can see how the trees and shrubs were taking over the graveyard.

President Michael Leikin and Kevin Moses Cohen, this pic's for you.

As you can see, Neal is holding a Moldovan lawnmower.

It turned out to be a great day with some good people. Hopefully I can start up another project with those girls soon to finish cleaning up the cemetery.

Bine aţi venit la şcoală.

The first day of school for the entire country of Moldova is September 1. It's a national holiday and every school has a big celebration for the students. I got a call from my partners that morning to meet them at the school. Half of the village was there and the director (principal), mayor, and some of the village leaders spoke to congratulate the kids and wish them health and success. All of the kids showed up wearing fine suits and dresses, and they all brought flowers for their teachers. My partner introduced me to the village on the microphone. I thought for a split second there I was going to have to do an impromptu speech to the village in Romanian, but luckily they didn't ask. If the people of my village didn't know the tall, funny looking American dude before, they definitely know me now. The director proceeded to get back on the microphone, thanked me for being here, and invited me to join the first graders in their first class ever. So, next thing you know, I'm sitting in the back of the class with some cool, 7 year old, finely dressed Moldovan kids. I felt like Billy Madison. After class, I got invited into the director's office where I ended up taking a few shots of wine with the director, mayor, and a few village leaders. I would never find myself in this situation in America, but in Moldova a few shots of wine are taken to ensure the success of the new school year. Fii sanatos.




A video I took while sitting in the back of the class with the first graders. Their first lesson they learned about the significance of the first day of school celebration to Moldova.

National anthem being played.

Some of the kids wearing the national outfits while singing and dancing.


The first graders about to go to their very first class.


Some of the crowd around the school watching the kids.

Some sharply dressed first graders. These are the kids I sat in the class with.

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.