Our Pre-Service Training (PST) began when we arrived in Moldova on June 8th. The country director was waiting to escort us through customs, and several volunteers from the previous years were waiting to coral us all onto buses. We were taken to the school across for the Peace Corps office for some pizza and a quick ‘debriefing’, where we were given some essential supplies and discussed meeting our host families that afternoon. Our host mother is amazingly kind and doesn’t speak any English, but she had her niece with her to help translate. She showed us around her beautiful home and garden (left), which surrounds the home on three sides, trying to teach us some Romanian words. We sat down for dinner with our host family and shared pictures with them, discussing names, ages, and professions in extremely broken Romanian, and mixed with a little Italian (our host mother’s children live and work in Italy currently). The food was wonderful and our host mom made me ‘ragu de legume’ since I’m attempting to continue my vegetarianism here. After dinner, we slept for 10 hours (waking up in the middle of the night only long enough to identify that we both had Romanian words popping in and out of our heads) and then woke up early for our first full day in Moldova as Peace Corps trainees.
From the time we arrived until August 5th, we will be living in the beautiful suburb Stauceni (roughly pronounced Stow-chen, see right) of the capital Chisinau (roughly pronounced Kish-in-now) with our host mom Lidia and her grandson, Alessandro.
With some variation, our days in Stauceni are as follows:
6a: wake up and go running through fields if we are ambitious
7: wake up and get ready if we are exhausted
8: eat breakfast (usually oatmeal, cucumbers with salt, sometimes cheese and salami, and bread)
830-1230: language classes
1p: lunch with our host mom (soup, especially 'bors' is popular, pasta with homemade sauce, salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, dill, parsley and olive oil, or boiled potatoes with sauce)
2-5: ONE of TWO things:
1. technical session: current volunteers or our program managers help us identify aspects of working with organizations, NGO's, mayors offices, building relationships in communities, and developing youth projects
2. Self-Directed Activities: we have been given a few assignments to challenge us to develop practical skills, such as community mapping to see where and what resources are in the community or the youth action project where we create a project with children in the community before we leave our training village
after 5 until we go to bed: we usually try to relax in the garden at our house, take a walk, do language lesson homework, or sometimes do random fun things that I'll explain further down
Fun things we've done in Moldova so far:
-Two concerts outside before the election (see pictures below, our host mom, Lidia, is on my left and our host niece, Helena, is on my right)
-Picking mushrooms in the forest with our host mom
-Being invited to have wine, bread, cheese and coffee at a woman's house who was on her way to work in the fields
-Attended the 4th of July picnic in a park in the capital
-BBQ with the host niece, uncle, and aunt where Conrad sampled the fresh rabbit and homemade vodka
-Played cards with other trainees on Friday's
-Created a scavenger hunt in Romanian for our host grandson
-Picked cherries in the trees at ou
r house
In order, Alessandro (grandson), Lidia (host mom), Helena (niece), Nina (host mom's sister), and Dana (niece)
PLACEMENT!
We found out on Tuesday where we will be living and what we will be doing for the next two years!... It was extremely exciting to find out and we are VERY happy with our placement in....
CHISINAU, the capital! It's a pretty crazy placement since most people are placed in small villages, but we are very happy and excited to be living in the capital!
Conrad's job: he is working with a man who works at the University in the capital and is the president of the NGO that Conrad will be working with. Apparently, the NGO is an umbrella organization that helps develop other NGO's working with children's programs and other community development projects
Lindsay's job: I am working at a domestic violence shelter with women, children, and families and my partner (the Moldovan with whom I will be working with for the next two years) is the social assistant for this organization
We are very excited and will have MUCH more constant internet access after August 5th when we swear in as PC Volunteers and officially move to Chisinau and start working!
