Day of Peace and Friendship, July 31st

As a final training project for the Community and Organizational Development (COD) program, we were challenged to complete a youth activity in Cricova, one of the training villages. Myself along with 4 other trainees linked up with three Moldovan girls and planned a day for the children of Cricova that functioned like a field day and we called it Day of Peace and Friendship.

We had 3 planning meetings, went to speak with mayor three times, and advertized for the event 5 days before by walking around the village, handing out flyers, and talking with adults and children in the community with our broken language skills. We had no idea how it would turn out and this is what happened...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBF7JGe0SEs

It was amazing and the community seemed to really enjoy it and there were over 100 kids there. One mother said that they had never had an event like this for the children in the community and before the event started an older man told us that he was really grateful for us doing this for the kids in the community. It was such an incredible experience and I know that our group would not have been successful without the help of our fellow trainees and especially without our Moldovan partners!

Thank you to everyone for helping this day come together!

Lindsays birthday in Moldova!

I had my 27th birthday in Moldova on July 28th and here is what I did...

Woke up and my host mom had a dozen roses for me from her garden and sang Happy Birthday to me in Romanian

Then we had our Hub Site day in the capital with two other training villages from 9 to 5, where the Peace Corp admin gives us presentations about things we need to know from that end

After that, a bunch of the other trainees joined me for a glass of wine for my birthday in an outdoor bar in the capital

Conrad and I got back to our host familys house in the village and had a masa/dinner party with our host moms daughter and other grandson, who arrived that same day from Italy

Over all it was a great birthday and it was made even better by all of the texts and messages from everyone back home! Love and miss you all!