Colindatorii Craciunului

Christmas carolers....that's what colindatorii craciunului means.  The collection of colinde is large and is often sung by groups walking from house to house.  We have our own group of young colindatori on their way to bring a home made wreath to our local church.  Parinte Ion (Father John) meets us at the door with a warm smile.  The children perform some colinde and we are invited inside.  The church in our village is rather poor.  You can see its walls are pretty sparse.  The priest digs into the candle money and gives each child one or two lei (the Moldovan money is leu).  This is customary when carolers come to your door.  You give them money or treats.  Next we go to visit our mayor, or primar.  The children pose for a group shot in the lobby before we go in to the mayor's office.  She is surprised to see us as this is an unscheduled visit (of course!)  She digs into the candy stash for the gradinita (kindergarten) and gives each child one or two "bomboane" (candies).   Our carolers wave to you as we head to our New Year's show.  You can see the prominent 2014 made from holiday garland.  Yes, Mos Craciun (Old Man Christmas) made another appearance with gifts of bomboane for all.  We leave you with a video of our colindatori singing a song about Flori Dalbe ( the flowers of frost).  May you have a wonderful Anul Nou and if you are making those year end tax deductible gifts, don't forget our project  #14261001 on the Peace Corps website.

http://donate.peacecorps.gov/  

Christmas time is here

 

Christmas time is here.  Let's start with the basics.  The Christmas tree has to be dressed.  Around here it's called "brad frumos"  the beautiful fir.  You can see everyone at the Center  is getting into the act of decorating the tree, including Director Sergiu.  When it's all finished we stand it on a table and enjoy its frumoseness.  Of course we have to decorate the windows too.  "Craciun fericit" or Merry Christmas,  Santa who is known a "Mos Craciun"  or Old Man Christmas.  And a "La Multi Ani" for the New Year.  December 19th is the feast of St. Nicholae here in Moldova (not Dec 6th).  Parinte Ion the parish priest in our village gave us a visit on that day.   And so did St. Nick.  Here you see him coming in the door, and he has presents for everyone.  And it's Christmas time in the public square.  Here's our community tree in Orhei.  Here's Mos Craciun wishing you a Happy New Year...you see here in Moldova, Christmas is second in order.  It's on January 7th.  So most holiday greetings are reversed from ours.  Happy New Year and a Merry Christmas.

Winter Bazaar -- Spring Dreams

 

December, time for Christmas shopping.  The Winter Bazaar is an event held by the International Women's Club of Moldova every year to help raise funds for charity.  It's held in Chisinau at the exposition center called Mold-Expo.  This year we had a booth at the bazaar featuring some of the Moldovan partners and projects Peace Corps works with.  My center from Piatra was one of the projects there.  We had worked hard over the last month with the help of our Moldovan elves (children) to make many dozens of origami figures.  You can see them displayed on the top shelf at the bazaar.  Our director, Sergiu, was one energetic salesman all day long.  We tried to get $5 for each snowman and santa.  That's Hannah Dufford, a PC staffer, buying a crocheted snowflake.  Next Sergiu was getting money from the Italian Ambassador.  Speaking of ambassadors, there's our US Ambassador William Moser in the Santa hat at our PC booth trying some BBQ Pork.  I even got out on the sales floor.  After a long day, we sold most of our goods and came away with about $100 in profits.  That's a start on our Spring dream of having a new outdoor activity area.  Here's some recent shots of our kids making bean salad at the center.  Of course, they needed to add mayonnaise.  Doesn't it look good?!  Smiles and thumbs up means it meets quality control standards.  Here's Andreana, Marcel, Ionela, and Chiril....who all say please help make our Spring Dreams come true.  We'd love to have the outdoor shelter you see here at our center.  If you still have time for one more Christmas gift, make it at www.donate.peacecorps.gov/  project number 14-261-001 .  WE thank you, and Merry Christmas.

International Day of People with Disabilities

 

The International Day of People with Disabilities is December 3rd.  It's aim is to raise the awareness of us all about people living with disabilities and a reminder to include those people into our community life.  Where I work as a Peace Corps volunteer, The Multifunctional Community Center "Universul",   we have a special mission to people with disabilities.  I guess for that reason we were invited by our mayor to present a program in our village of Piatra for this special day.  It was an outdoor concert type celebration ( even though it's winter and 45 degrees outside.)  Our stage was the back steps of the "casa cultura"  or cultural center.  All we needed was a desk and a sound system and we were ready to roll.  Domnul Sergiu, our center director, gave an introduction to the theme of this celebration and shared some poetry.  Some of our finest singers, and poets, and dancers performed for us.  Even one of our parents joined in with an acapella rendition of a Moldovan song.  I have tried to up load it here.  I hope you can hear the melody.  It has that distinctive Moldovan sound that includes a little bit of the minor scale now and then.  All this music got our audience excited about doing the hora.  And the sunset was a final act to close the show.