Field Trip to Calarasi

Friday afternoon and its time for a field trip to Calarasi.  Calarasi is about a 45 minute drive NW from Chisinau.  It is a city of 16,000 people and is only 580 years old!  The symbol of Calarasi is the travelor....specifically a travelor on horseback.  The name Calarasi has that meaning in Romanian.  There are some major industries here.  There is a cognac producer, a large canner of fruits and jellies, a clothing manufacturer, a large dairy processing 5 tons of milk a day, and a manufacturer of PVC pipes.  There are some foreign investors here.  There is a partnership with an Italian firm to make shoes, and a contract with Syria for the export of walnuts.  We arrived at the Primaria or the Mayor's Office and were greeted by the Mayor and Vice Mayor.  We had the chance to meet Bob, an M25 volunteer who is extending his stay for 10 more months after two years in Moldova.  We spoke about his work supporting his Moldovan work partner,Liliana, who is a funding specialist on the staff of the Mayor.  Together they have received grants to make improvements to the community.  Then we visited a Magazin Universal...which just translates to a "general store".  But weren't just shopping, we were visiting one of PCV Bob's secondary projects, a youth center.  It's up on the second level above the store.  You can see what a cool mural the youth have made along with the participation of a few PCV's.  As we boarded our bus for home, we were all inspired by what can happen when the Peace Corps Volunteer and the community can work together.  In the background we could see the Moldovan Codru or Forested Preserve on the hillsides.

At home in Moldova

Three weeks since our arrival here in Moldova and I'm already feeling at home.  You can see what a spacious comfortable room I have and the beautiful scene just outside my back porch window.  Every day I have about a 15 minute walk to school for Romanian classes which run until about 12:30.  We return home for lunch and then back to school for tech training in community organizations which lasts until 5 pm.  Once a week we head to Chisinau (about a half hour ride) by public transportation.  There Peace Corps staff address issues of importance to our adaptation to our environment and safety.  This Friday we are taking a field trip to an active Peace Corps village and see how volunteers who have be at the job for a year or more are making a difference.  So as the travel post card always says.  "Having a great time.  Wish you were here."

Celebrating Active Citizenship

This past Monday we were invited to a special event in Chisinau.  It was the expostion of community development projects accomplished by 28 young Moldovan women who participated for the past year in FETE (Moldovan word for girls)  or Future Empowerment through Experience.  The program was funded through a grant from the US Embassy and staffed by many Peace Corps volunteers as mentors in the many villages that the young women come from.  The projects included everything from cleaning up a river, to starting a program to care for the elderly at home, and things as practical as creating a place to play in the park, or promoting reusable shopping bags.  The event included information stations where FETE participants could explain how they planned and fundraised money to complete their community projects.  It was an awesome event and very inspirational.  If you want to find out more about this great project, here are a few links:  https://sites.google.com/site/fetemoldova  or  https://www.facebook.com/pages/FETE-Moldova

La Vila Rural

On Saturday I went with my host Galina to visit one of her close friends Nadia.  Early in the afternoon  I watched her make "placinta" which is a favorite Moldovan dish made of filo dough stuffed with cheese or cabbage.  Nadia came and picked us up by car.  She lives just outside of Stauceni in a rural villa.  What a beautiful set up.  We would call it a country home.  Its built on two levels with the bottom level looking out on to a wonderful garden.  The garden has a solar shower and an outhouse but the home does have indoor toilet as well.  You see pictures here of both these acomodations as well as a well or "fontana".  Notice the door to the left of the well.  It goes into an underground fruit cellar.  It's walls are made of limestone and keeps an even cool temperature of about 50 degrees year round.  At this lovely place several friends came to visit as well and we had a fabulous meal with chicken being grilled by Tudor the domnul of the house.  After much food and wine we got some dancing started to Moldovan folk music.  I must say I felt right at home. 

Muzica, muzica, muzica

Friday night and its time to kick back and watch a little televisor.  I saw a wonderful slice of television shows tonight.  Some were in Russian and some in Romanian.  There were historical documentaries about wolrd war II.  Lots of footage on Adolph Hitler.  I suspect its the other half of the archive we don't see on Public TV back in the States.  The most entertaining item for me was a folk music performance of Moldavian muzica.  The Moldovan folk orchestra was amazing.  Persons playing the hammer dulcimer, an accordian, a guitar, three clarinets, a silver trumpet, a bass fiddle, someone playing pan pipes like the Andean Indians, and eight violins.  123, 123, 123 a peppy beat.  And the singers, male and female soloists performed as their admirers came up to stage mid performance and presented bouquets of beautiful flowers to them and kissed them on the cheek mid performance.  The singer recieved them with what ackowledgement they could give without loosing a note or a word and placing them on a special awards table behind them.  Viata este buna in Moldova!
(vee-ats-a yeste boona)

Happy Anniversary to our Peace Corps couple

Wednesday, June 20th was the 44th wedding anniversary of our Peace Corps Couple here in Stauceni.  Jan and Leslie are both in the Moldova 27 group and are recently form Pennsylvania.  They treated our peace corps group to delicious cake from our local bakery.  We wished them many more years with a bottle of sparkling wine from Cricova...one of our neighboring towns.  It's quite renowned for its wine production.

Masa si Ziua Tua

I have been happy to find a Catholic parish here in Stauceni. The people of Moldova are 98% Orthodox Christians. So the chances of finding a Roman Catholic church in your town is not that great. Our parish here is named in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This past Saturday they had big celebrations for the feast day of the parish. But the pictures posted here are actually a birthday party that I attended on Sunday evening. It was for the wife of the Deacon in this parish. Peter and Kathleen Coates are from Great Britain. Petru was the first permanent deacon to be ordained for Eastern Euorpe. His wife's birthday was grandly celebrated with a barbeque in the parish yard. The food was fabulous as well as the company. I met priests from Germany and Figi and even a home town boy from Stauceni. The nuns in the parish are from Poland. And the parish receives a lot of support from Caritas International from the Vienna office. It has a daily hot meal program for 150+, mostly for children after school. It also manages one of two homeless shelters for all of Moldova. I have met one of the men. He is from Sierra Leon (Africa) and has lived here in Moldova for 13 years. He has become a citizen and is very politically active. Masa is the word for a Moldovan food fest, and Ziua Tua de Nastere...your birthday.

A Trip to the Market

On Sunday, my host Mom and I went to  Chisinau to buy some food for the week.  They call the main market there the Piazza Central.  We took the bus from Stauceni which costs the same as the routiera (3 lei or about 30 cents) but it is an actual full size bus.  You have to walk out of the village onto the main highway to board it.  So the likely hood that you won’t be a sardine is pretty good.  The Piazza Central is busier on weekends because that’s when people from the villages can come into the big city and do their shopping.  Believe me, the Piazza Central is the biggest farmer’s market I’ve ever seen.  There are special sub markets for dairy goods such as cascaval (hard cheese).  When I stepped into that cheese market my nose smelled Wisconsin.  I was smiling inside.   A tractor pulls a big tank of water through the market spraying water on the asphalt to keep the dust down.  We bought a giant load of fruits and vegetables, some chicken, some crenvursti (hot dogs), some eggs, some oil.  The whole trip only took about 2 hours.  I’ve included a few pictures from our trip as well a picture of my host mom, Galina.  Sanatate…..be well.

Life in the Commune

Hello from Stauceni, a commune of 10,000 people on the outskirts of Chisinau.  Stauceni is the type of community that gives lots of evidence of an emerging middle class here in Moldova.  The houses are in good condition, many of them are new construction.  There is a beuatiful new primary school and a tall modern apartment building.  Yet the village life continues as in the past with large gardens at every house.  People actually buy very little food at the grocery store.  99% of the food I have had this first week has all been home made and delicious.  Lots of soup and salad and delicious sauces.  You can see that free range chickens are also popular here.  There is also the village Orthodox church with its shining domes against the blue skies.  Life in the commune of Stauceni is good. 

Buna Ziua de Stauceni

Hello from Stauceni a commune locatied about 7 kilometers north of Chisinau.  This will be my home during preservice training.  We have our training 4 days a week here in the school building.  We do language training all morning and have technical training in our community organizing work in the afternoon.  One day a week we take the routiera to Chisinau.  There we meet up with all the other M27's who come in from other villages.  There are 9 of us M27's who live in Stauceni.  The first picture is my casa gazda or guest house.  It is on Strada Alexandrei.  You can see how beautiful all the flowers are here.  I especially liked this gate of a neighbor's that featured cranes.  Brought me full circle to the International Crane Foundation (read preavious post).  From Stauceni (Stau-chen), I wish you health.  Noroc si sanatos!

First Impressions

On our first day of PreService Training we were welcomed with a traditional ceremony.  People in traditional Moldovan dress welcomed us to Moldova with the breaking of bread, a taste of salt, and a sip of wine (apple juice in Peace Corps).  You can see the group of M27 Peace Corps gathered in the auitorium of a high school in Chisinau.  We have our weekly hub meetings there with all of us.  M27 means we are the 27th group of Peace Corps volunteers to come to Moldova.  There are 66 of us from all over the USA or as they say in Moldovan SUA.  Many have come from Seatlle and Ca;lifornia and four of us from Wisconsin.  Tomorrow we mark our first week in Moldova.  You can see the sun rising from my bedroom in Stauceni.  La Revedere.

Moldova Here We Are!

We arrived at the Chisinau Airport about 10:30 at night on June 7^th.  Many of the Peace Corps volunteers in country were there to greet us.  As we gathered our giant baggage from the revolving belt, they were there with carts to help us move smoothly through customs and have our Peace Corps Passports stamped by the Moldovan officials.  Two full size buses were waiting to take the 66 of us new PEACE CORPS TRAINEES to a local hotel (Hotelul La Villa Verde) for the night.  Many of the in country volunteers were there also to cheer us as we left the busses.  Can you imagine how great it feels to be welcomed after traveling for over 24 hrs straight?   Minunat  (Wonderful)   And we were treated to our very first meal in Moldova,  American Pizza!  Actually we were much more interested in a shower and a bed

The Trip Across

It was an exciting trip across the world from Eastern USA to Eastern Europe.  We left Philadelphia on June 6^th early in the morning about 8:30 AM.  We traveled by bus to JFK airport in New York and were there by midday.  It was exciting for me to cross the George Washington Bridge and to see the NY skyline along the Hudson River.  I even saw the Globe in Flushing Meadows from the expressway that is a souvenir from the International Trade Fair of 1969.  I was there when it was brand new!  Our baggage trials began with the ticket line at Delta and continued until we ended up in Chisinau, Moldova.   The flight for Istanbul left the gate at 4:30 PM.  Ten hours later we were landing in Turkey.  From the airport we could see the channel of water that connected the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea.  Large tanker ships were busy crossing back and forth.  The International Airport in Istanbul is quite an exciting place.  The many types of people from so many different cultures that are exotic to us were present coming and going.  Most noticeable were African women in stunning dresses both on their heads and on their bodies.  Indian women in saris. Arab men and women dressed in traditional garb.  And tired American Peace Corps volunteers who sought refuge in a quite corner of the airport to take a nap in the corner as we had a ten hour layover in the airport.  Some of us ate our meals at the food court that featured TurCuisine, Italiane Café, Quick Asia, Popeye’s Chicken, Burger King, and Sabarro Pizza.  Some were adventurous and got a visa for $20 to enter Turkey and visit the big city of Istanbul.  We were all back and ready to board our Air Turkey flight leaving at 7:30 PM.  It was a nonstop flight to Chisinau.  An hour and a half flight, but it took us two hours to leave the gate.   A busy airport.  As the sun was setting in the West, we winged our way directly north and I could see the north shore of the Black Sea from my airplane seat.  One of the flight attendants thought I was Turkish and tried speaking to me in Arabic.  I was complimented, but her English was perfect, so I asked for “red wine, please.”