photo update. click the photos to make them bigger.

winter is knocking

11.24.08
Thought 1.

Today I was just sitting out on my balcony getting some fresh crisp winter air in my lungs. The first time I did this today I realized im not unhappy here. It is a good feeling to have. I am happy here. I do feel a little unproductive but im content. I have been for a while now I guess. I drafted a plan of action to get myself better aligned and prepared to take on this next year, hitting the ground running. I call it my Peace Plan for the Winter. I feel pretty good about it. I did a little goal setting exercise to improve myself and then how im going to go about making any sort of impact here as a peace corps volunteer.

Peace Plan Winter 2008

There is two categories for my plan this winter. The first is actions that will better myself as a individual to make better use of free time. The second addresses my work for the Peace Corps.

Self Improvement Plan
Total time put towards self improvement 1,515 minutes or 25.25 hours a week

Music (45 minutes a day, 225 minutes a week)
· Practice playing the guitar no less then 30 minutes a day on week days
· Practice or have fun playing the harmonica 15 minutes a day on week days
Body (90 minutes a day 3 days a week, 270 minutes a week)
· Go to the gym 3 times a week
· Stretching for 30 minutes a day
· Hydrate
Mind (Totaling 15 hours)
· Listen to the economist audio edition every week to keep up on world end economic events. (easily accomplished during long bus rides to and from Chisinau) 7 hours
· Language Development
o Study with Rosetta Stone Language program Russian
§ 3 lessons a week or 5 hours in total.
o Go to my language tutor twice a week for 3 hours in total.
Miscellaneous ( 2 hour a week )
· Cooking proficiency 1 new dish a week
· Learn recipe 30 minutes
· Find ingredients 30 minutes
· Cooking of the dish Variable average 1 hour


Work Plan
(No less then 3 hours a days spent on any of the following ideas or a minimum 15 hours a week.)
Divided in 4 parts
Agriculture
· Develop a plan for promotion of soil testing before the use of chemical fertilizers, carrying out the promotion at agriculture supply stores to address the issues of over fertilization or improper fertilization. As a side advantage promote correct usage of fertilizers to receive maximum yields.
· Research the possibility of growing a type of Marigold as a type of cash crop to be sold to a Netherland Pharmaceutical company. Pilot test plot, and logistics work for what to do with the yields.

Community Organizational Development
· Youth Action Group
o Facilitating and Promotion of youth community development activities.
§ Student Disco (student initiated)
· Mayor’s office Website
o Design and instruct on how to develop site
· Networking NGO Site
o Project involving data basing Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and posting their needs so that international organizations, churches, or volunteers looking for places to lend their aid or resources can make an informed decision.

Business and Rural Development
· Working with the “COMMUNITAS” Association in the south of Moldova through their chairman of this organization to spread information on the steps needed to take in planning a business plan and finding financial resources to implement the plan.

Peace Corps
· Volunteer brainstorming sessions
o Organize interested volunteers for monthly brainstorming sessions, get volunteers working together and sharing experiences. Idea sharing and group think sessions will give volunteers feeling ineffective an environment where they can gain ideas they can use to become effective or strengthen current project ideas.


Thought 2.

So after finishing my list I went out to the balcony again just to kind of reflect on my goals. Its cold outside. Cold enough to freeze some puddles from a rain we got a few days back forming some nice little ice sheets. The little kids coming home from school begin to play on them running and sliding across them. I notice they are playing a little violently as they push and shove each other out of the way to get their turn to run and slide. More kids show up and they begin shoving harder and yelling at one another in Russian. I am far enough away not to catch any words but I can see they aren’t being all that kind. These kids are ages ranging from id say 7 until maybe 10. They are not just shoving but punching, with clinched fists aiming for the face. Soon enough all hell breaks loose. Kids begin choosing sides and they shoving matches and punching matches ensue. From here kids begin to grab clumps of dirty frozen leaves and throwing them at one another. Then one kids goes over breaks a smaller patch of ice, grabs this shard and throws it at another. After this escalation both sides being doing the same picking up anything from sticks to pieces of fragmented asphalt to chunks of ice and dirt. Throwing and fighting go on right out in my apartment complex courtyard area. Its violent. I thought about going down to stop them but its not my job, I don’t think I could even begin to solve this problem.

It saddened me. What can I do to alleviate this? The Answer is nothing. All I can do is observe and report. What are the causes of this problem? Is it the lack of work in this country or poor standard of living? Is this causing domestic violence at home teaching this kids to be this way? Is it the lack of supervision of these children? Is it just in human nature to be violent and mean to one another?

I am doing fine

This is from left to right, darren, phil and me. they come up to my sight to hang out and see my awesome pad.

This is what we in the family call "west chicago". thats for you dad. i even did the whole west chicago voice when my and my roomate were cooking it. so whenever we fry random things on the skillet he asks if we are going to be making some west chicago.

Thats my roomate on the far right. to his left is his friend, and then two other volunteers david in the plad and andrew at 12 o'clock. just enjoying a nice dinner at our aparment

look at the joy west chicago brings to his face!

October 16, 2008

First of all happy birthday dad. You’re a great man and I am happy to have you as a father. So just to clear some stuff up, no I am not dead. Sorry I kind of fell off the blog universe for a while but in all actuality I kept waiting cause there wasn’t really anything I wanted to say. I Am done with recapping my day to day and try to just put down thoughts as they come. To be honest they just were not coming. It was kind of the same old same old day in and out. Start the day, go to work, research some stuff for any kind of project that I could do with my organization and coming up empty.

Quick ideas I was bouncing around on involved dabbling into some cash cropping. This type of marry gold that is being purchased by a pharmaceutical company that uses the oil for different types of medicines. They offer to buy the oil at a set price so there is no risk about the price falling at the end of the harvest. It had some promise to it only it just ran out of steam. I had my partner all sold on it to a skeptical point but closer then I have sold him on anything else. Finally I convinced him enough to peak his interest to the point he asked me to do a forecasts on the profits that could be had. He also made it clear this would not be a seminar to that we would show others how to do this but would be a business for him. The project ran out steam once we hit our first obsticale that we need a plant that can process the seed from the mary golds and turn it into oil. We assumed we can use this plant in Balti to the south of us but we were unclear if we could use the same machine that would do this with sunflowers and make it work for our needs. It’s a Russian company and I can’t talk to them in Romanian. My partner just kind wussed out on calling them and we left it at that.

Also tried to push for combining three different crops on one plot of land. The first would be a walnut orchard. In between the walnut trees would be plumb trees along the same rows. And in between the rows would be the mary golds. In the plan it would allow a person to take out credit to pay for the different inputs. Because to take out credit requires you pay it back really quickly if not in one year be able to pay it back you need a quick returning investment. So you use the cash crop of mary golds and get your investment back and use that money to fund your orchard, where after 4 years you can begin recouping your investment. If that whole thing doesn’t make sense I am talking with my host brother about how he needs to cook these cookies in the oven and he keeps interrupting me. … [end thought]

10.24.08

Ok im back on board. Today is moving a long a good pace. Let me see where I last ended… uh huh. Ok so I was explaining some of the things im trying to do at my work without success. Ok well recently im really starting to pick up pace on this whole composting idea. I have been bouncing around with this for sometime and only receiving crap from my partners. I decided against including them. I have this book lasagna gardening by patricia lanza that my wonderful mom sent me that has some great tips on composting and then sheet composting. Sheet composting is just like using organic materials used in composting put layering them where you are going to have your garden. You start with we newspapers as the first layer then build up from there, using things like peat moss, yard clippings, leaves from trees (in the fall) and so forth. You alternate the layers and as long as you use a decent ratio with the high carbon (green things living or were living) and low carbon (dead things like fallen leaves, corn stalks…) your little compost pile decomposes by heating up then leaving you with wonderfully fertile soil.

On top of this wonderful “black gold” as it is referred to by some, it helps reduce landfills by up to 60% all organic materials were disposed of properly by composting. I hope to encourage its use by using high school students as the median. I started carrying around my book and having people ask me what it is. I tell them and then give them my pitch to hopefully get them excited and so far its working. I am going to start collecting materials this week. I have found news papers, and going to buy garbage bags so I can rake up all my ingredients for my compost pile from the park. I also found out where I can buy peat moss or hopefully can and will be going to there to check on the price. I will fotograph my experiment and document how I did it with the kids. Then wait for the garden to do its thing this winter and wait for the spring to have freshly decomposed fertilizer. We will compare the yield from this fertilized organic composting gardening with normal gardening and see if there is any difference. If there is we log results and show others how.

Also I have started finally volunteer groups at the highschools. Plenty of stress and adventures to be had just getting the attention of the kids, and putting up announcements and talking to classes all in Romanian to get them interested. Really difficult but im glad I did it! There is about 20 kids showing up from one school. We meet on Sundays at 2 and from another school we will see as in we have our first meeting tomorrow. But with this brings promise of doing good by empowering the youth to develop their own ideas and projects and them we will implement them. I learned a lot since my last group and I hope to have even more success with this one.

That’s really all I have going on. Im researching butterfly farming for my partner.. there is not even one here in moldova that we have found out about, and we would raise them like a cash crop to sell at weddings kinda like throwing rice you release them at weddings for good look or something. It would be interesting to say the least if it would take off.

I love living here in this apartment. My day to day life is much improved, im happier, independent and enjoy having a roommate who I can cook with and play games with during down times. I started doing sprints again to get back into shape. My partner dropped the news that he might be going to Moscow this spring for a few months to find some work and money because its just cutting it where we work now. He will also take a month vacation in November so my life will get a whole lot slower at work, if that is even possible.

I dunno what life has in store for me in the coming months, but as long as I have more good days then bad I call them a success. That will come with positive thinking, and a drive to really be content with my life as it is. I have a guitar now, I will begin picking that up as a hobby, and then starting in the next couple of weeks I will take harmonica lessons twice a month.

I am done feeling sorry for myself.

Lesson Number One of Leadership: .
For the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next the people fear, and the next the people hate. When the best leader's work is done, the people say, "We did it ourselves."
Lao Tsu
.
First Rule of Project Design: .
If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.
Anonymous

Lesson Number One of Management: .
There are only two things in life: Reasons and Results. (Reasons Don't Count)
Robert Anthony
.
Lesson Number One of Planning: .
If you do not know where you are going, then any road will do.
Lewis Caroll
.
Lesson Number One of Self Reliance: .
If you blame others, you give up your power to change.
Robert Anthony
. .
First Rule of Awareness Raising .
A good message must be:
Kept very simple, and must
Reach all people.
Phil Bartle
First Rule of Management: .
Do not work hard, get results.
Bill Owen

I will stop wallowing around in my own self pitty and do somthing. May those be my famous last words. Eye of the Tiger baby! I hope to have somthing of use to report in the following week or two. For if I don't it's because I didn't try hard enough. That is just somthing I will not accept.

8.27.08 brutally honest.

Drinking is culture here. It is everywhere, from the celebrations, to mid day work shots, to dinner shots with whisky or wine. You see it in drunks walking the streets stumbling by, or breakfast shots at the local bars as you walk by and there are a handful of men standing around a small table doing straight up vodka shots at 7 in the morning with guys all around them just sipping on their beers going about their days.

Word to the wise for future volunteers, this should have been stressed to all volunteers thinking about coming here. Its part of the culture and if you are not comfortable throwing down with the men you will have a very hard time fitting in or even enjoying yourself here.

I know some volunteers who in coping with their environment, may it been low productivity, a hopeless situation, homesickness, or just plain boredom are drinking more then maybe they had in the past or more then they should. When volunteers are put in a situation that is stressful and unknown like we are in then throw in a culture that you have to refuse drinks at ever corner if you don’t want to be drunk it can be a hard thing to say no. I remember in the winter, as I was being offered glass of wine after glass saying come on one more, “I don’t like to drink alone” you give into it and maybe you fall asleep at 8 that night ending a possibly boring or stressed out day early... Once you realize you are doing it you have the choice to stop it or continue it. I stopped it once I realized what I was doing and feel in control of myself. This summer has allowed me to escape it given in the host family I just left to live alone they ran out of wine and I was not forced it every night like I had been before.

Our peace corps doctor here in Moldova who is a native Moldovan said on this topic…You have to understand this is the culture this is our culture and society and if you reject it we reject you. He tells of times he knows of friends who refused to drink that wer fired from their jobs, there is this feeling of if you don’t drink with us you want something from us, your not our friend maybe you’re a spy.. (going to the extreme there but he was honest in what he was saying)

That makes me think about those days at work I would refuse to drink because it was a work day maybe my partners thinking less of me or don’t include me in things because I don’t take to drink as they do. It puts a whole new dynamic to saying no the drink and as that doctor was insinuating … you can’t really say no if you expect to be integrated in your community.

I am not saying I don’t drink here, I do, but I try to do it where kids would not see me or even high school students who are potential students of mine if I get any of these project groups off the ground here in the future.

Its not an easy job we do here, and with this added element of alcohol pressed on us on top of everything else it makes it that much harder.

I live without a host family now. I have an apartment. I will be sharing it with a 15 year old boy who is going to the local high school so he doesn’t have to commute from the village about 45 minutes away every day. His mom bought the apartment and I am renting a room from her. I am looking forward to having a roommate, even if he is so young. I hope this will help my conversational skills because he is a Romanian speaker.

I am also feeling alone at work. Given the level of corruption and inherent problems with my organization I don’t see myself really writing a project with them. I also don’t even know if I have the possibility to write a actual project that might leave any kind of lasting impact on them. This realization is a scary one because it mean what I do might be me doing this on my own.
I will focus on the youth because they are more receptive to making a difference or working for others without this “I work for only one person and that’s me” mentality. I have been planning my next year and have some ideas. I am in the process of making an action plan and we will see where it takes me.

I don’t want to just do a project so I can say I did something here. I don’t want to write a grant that my friends and family from back home fund either because I feel im forcing a project here that might necessarily be needed if the only funding I can find is with my own resources. I am here to learn, I am here to teach, but im not here to force anything on anybody. If someone comes to me for help may it be ideas I might have about a project or the a broken communication link I will do it with open arms. What I am not here do do in my perspective is force change, force things on people as things I want to accomplish but the inherent ideas need to come from locals, from there I will just capacity build.

For anybody out there who I might be letting down with these goals… sorry. I am over the expectation I will come here and change the world for the good as the realization has set in that I might be getting more out of this then anybody else here and that the Peace Corps helps the volunteer to a greater extent then the host country nationals.

8.27.08 Picking grapes making wine… and then squash..

Luckily for me I have been homeless one of the things I was able to experience was working in the fields with the old host family from Peresecina. They all went to the fields to go collect grapes to make wine and I was invited then told to reconsider. I was like heck yea ill go to the fileds and collect grapes to make wine! They said it wasn’t fun but I just wanted to help with something.

So about 18 hours later ill tell ya this, its not horrible but its not exactly fun either ;-). Spent the entire day the first day from 7 am until 9 at night working. There was about 15 of us in total and we had this little process going on where we would have pickers and bucket carries with the grapes. I made sure to do every job, from the picking, to the carrying, to the delivering the grapes with car and trailer and dumping them into barrels through this hand crank grape smasher. This wonderful time was finished off with a Masa or meal where we filled our mouths with watermelons, soup, bread, beer and of course some whisky. ( given I had run out of my store bought water I was forced to resort to drinking the well water like everybody else) I got lucky having little side effects after the consumption.

SQUASH!

Now for the squash. So I was homeless for a bit so in my travels I stayed in a this village with another peace corps volunteer near my site. I woke early one morning and forced myself to be able to go to the fields do to whatever they were doing. Turns out we were picking squash and throwing them into this truck trailer. Just had to throw that story in because I had never picked up a squash before I don’t think having only seen them at thanksgiving festivals next to pumpkins who dominate that holiday.

8.27.08 I bought a bike, but there was nothing easy about it …

So I purchased a bike. I have this friend here where I live who was very adamant about buying a bicycle and convinced me more or less that I wanted also to buy a bike like he did. I convinced myself I could ride all over the place to the different villages surrounding our town without the need to pay for transport or wait for transport, I can just bike anywhere no problem its easy!
So to get a better selection of bikes so we could get more for our money we decided to take a bus taxi to balti (pronounced belts) to peruse the second largest city in moldova for a bike that we could afford and wouldn’t fall apart.

We left early searched the city in all the largest outdoor markets we could find, an indoor bike shop then settled finally on two that looked the part even if it was a little more expensive then we had budgeted for but not enough to really break us. So its now about 2 in the afternoon we have our bikes and the only thing that stands in our way is the 70km back to Edinet. Why not in the heat of the day just ride back right? Good Plan!

We made it around 30 km before my legs refused to go anymore. I am going to blame it on me being out of shape, lacking on sleep the night before and last but most importantly least my bike was riding with resistance and we lacked the tools and know how to fix the problem. It felt as if I was riding with my rear brake on the entire time giving me constant resistance even on level ground.

We left our bikes in my buddies cousin’s village and took a car the rest of the way. Our bikes followed the next day, still not sure hoe it was arranged but they made it here. I am also not sure who designed the seat but if was to thoroughly bruise my tail bone (so much so that after nearly 3 weeks after the event it still is tender) they accomplished their goal.

8.27.08 International Work Camp.

That little girl was my best friend at camp even if she did abuse me with that racket.

What is that? In short it is a 2 week extravaganza of learning how to work with others giving some children something to do in a poor country in Europe. Here is the down and dirty.
It began on the 4th of August. The first of august I moved out of my house where I was living with a host family for a more comfortable environment of living on my own in an apartment. It really was my goal from the first day I did come to site was to get back to some normalcy for myself and live on my own again. It is quite a shock to not only move into another country but also move into another family. I mean I had fun living with my real family in the state but once I hit 18 I was ready to get out and do my own thing! So being forced to live with a family was a good experience but I was ready to move out once I could.

Any way, back to the camp. I left my house the first of August only to find out my apartment that I was going to be moving into was going to take a few extra days to finish before I was going to be moving in and living there. No problem, I took off down to the south to where my old host family lived and stayed with them for 3 days or so expecting to come home to an apartment ready for me.

Unfortunately or fortunately it was not completed and they quoted me a few more days. (lets just say this quoting 3 days into the future goes on for nearly 4 weeks before I was finally able to move in… last night).

So I needed a place to stay in the mean time… Farina my German site mate had space at her house but it came with a catch… I am not working full time with this camp her organization put together for 2 weeks and sharing her accommodations with 12 other volunteers from all over Europe plus Azerbaijan.

I had a really great time all in all and made some good friends from countries all over the place. The camp taught me a lot about how to go about planning a camp, and team work, and managing expectations.

The scenario was this… 12 volunteers with a a description of their 2 week service was working with disabled teens ages 18-20 somethings… and what they were brought into was a 2 week summer camp working with kids ages 7-14. Quite a surprise for a few of them but they took it well and we put on a sporadic camp from 9-4 every day then spent the evening planning for the next day and cooking for ourselves. We did this with no running water (water was out for the city for the first week and a half) so bucket baths and one outhouse for all of us. I slept on the floor on a few blankets and we all were mercilessly attacked by mosquitoes who feasted on all of our foreign bodies like it was thanks giving.

Nearly everybody went home happy and we all learned about each others country and culture such as … nearly all of them didn’t like America for various reasons and in the end they all liked me so they thought America can’t be all that bad ;-)

Busses and the sweating that comes with them 7.29.08

This will just be a little blurb about the busses and the current. This is something I just have to get off my chest. I HATE THE FAKE THING KNOWN AS THE CURRENT!.... ok I feel better. Im not sure if I have described the current before… it’s the act of opening two windows so that wind passes through one window and out the other.
The current can attack you in the car (and most likely does) and is the culprit of sore throats, coughs, getting a fever… and the cure is quick injections or feet in hot salty water, or simply shutting a door/window to keep that nasty brut out away from you.

This craziness doesn’t bug me to much except when I am in a situation where I have no control. Such as riding in a crammed backed bus (which is more or less a plumbers van with some seats in the back and some windows for viewing but not for opening. We sit in this hot box sweating profusely if its summer outside until we reach our destination. I normally get up drenched in sweat and slosh my way off the bus at my stop rubbing my perspiration on anybody I possibly can as I squeeze through them to get to the door.

I like to rub the perspiration as if to tell them look at this nonsense and look what it is doing to me!

Wondering through life eating fruit 7.29.08

A few weeks back I was taking a lot of walks through the fields just taking in the senery and the agriculture enviorment that is all around me I just have to hike out of town about 20 minutes to see it. Its easy to forget its there.

As soon as I get out there its like I am in a different part of the country. There are wheat fields acres and acres long, next to sunflower fields and corn. As I walk down the dirt road I see little patches of land that has been partitioned off that people work out, outlining their fields maybe with a box of corn all the way around it then inside that box is a box of carrots then, peas or beans or even potatoes, its beautiful and interesting.

I also have been working with my partner on his plum orchard and the last time we finished cutting grass with a scicle? (I don’t know how to spell it .. but its that blade grim reaper carries with him) in mud half way up to my knees… I got to go to a neighboring orchard and eat some fresh peaches off the trees. They were easily some of the best fruit I have ever eaten in my life.

Other days I will just be walking and grab a handful of cherries off a tree or go through a garden picking strawberries. It really lets you appreciate how wonderful fresh fruit is and really brings nature back into the picture where it seems so lost from view or thought.

Kids with handicap (situation here about that) 7.29.08

Give you a quick situation enlightenment. Kids with handicaps here are seen as inferior human beings. At least that is my understanding from people or the impression I am getting. I have heard remarks of people about them that stems from a lack of understanding in why the children have turned out they way they have.

It is sad, and because of this they children are suffering. Because the parents are ashamed of their children they don’t go outside of their house or their yards. There is an estimated 15 kids in our town that have not seen more then their most intimate relatives. Farina the German volunteer has been working with two twins, taking them on walks through the town a couple of days a week. I walked with her a couple of times and now the whole town thinks we are married and have children. Not only this but they look at us with pity on their faces and some udder fear and distaste.

I am not sure what can be done really to convince the parents of the children to take them out of their houses and take them on walks or send them to play with other children if they can but it’s a concern I have.

Success? Soil testing? Not shot down immediately… well not totally…

7.18.08

So I am sitting at work reading this gigantic book about soil in English because it is just more productive for me to learn in English then read information in Romanian, though I do from time to time read in Romanian to pass the time while learning about agriculture and learn some terminology… that was a long sentence, I hope nobody passed out reading that aloud. ;-)

Anyway, I am reading about soils, crops, and fertilizer use, a book I never thought I would ever have any interest in ever in my life has me interested. So it is talking about soil testing for people so they can know in what condition their soil is in. With this information they might add some fertilizer (may it be organic or with chemicals I am not getting into that debate) to improve their yields of the crop or just the vitamin content of the fruit or vegetable.

So I ask my partner if he knows of any place where we could get tests like this done.. a lab or something near by. He said he didn’t know but there probably is. I asked if he does it, he says no, I know its necessary but I don’t do it, and neither does anybody else. After pestering him with questions and ideas as usual we get into a debate on weather or not this would be a good project or not.

Finally we decide to find out if it is even possible. I ask him if there is a testing center in Balti (big city south of us about an hour). He doesn’t know, I check the internet with avail. We decide to call our local office in balti and ask. They know of a place, they give us the number, we call, we find out they do exist, they do provide these services and guess what! They are really cheap and fairly fast. Aproximately $4 for a test and it takes roughly only 30 days to complete.

Then after finding out this information a man walks in a friend my partners of course he is not a random person looking for agriculture help from our hidden organization hears us talking about it and says, maybe he will go and get it done for his land. That sparks me into thinking, nobody really knows about this program, if they do they don’t’ know how about doing these tests, how about we do a project surrounding this topic?

Then after a second thought after my partner who doesn’t like working (the less the better, says we could just write we did this on paper but not really do it). I decide well how about we get the information from this lab (I hope they have information on how to do the samples and then how to interpret the results) and do some seminars for real in promotion to a business we can start by taking taking samples for people, taking multiple samples to lab, getting the info, translating the results for the locals in language they an understand then charge for this service.

Right? Sounds promising? Then comes him thinking… hmmm.. I dunno… lets ask people, so he goes about with me asking everybody we can find in the building if they would play, he of course didn’t pitch it right because you have to say the importance of doing the tests… you know really sell the idea before asking them for the $10 for the tests and results…. So everybody said… na… that’s ok and there goes our idea.

I will still try to do a seminar or so at least getting word out about it and whey its important. ( overuse of chemical fertilizers or misuse is horrible for the environment and detrimental to crop yields and nobody know how much to use but just buys the crap and puts it on their crops). From there if I can get enough interested I will try to sell the idea to them that we are a value add and maybe we can get some takers…

Next week we hopefully plan to go to balti and find the lab and ask for information. I offered to pay for the gas to get there and back, (without this its… a uhh its too expensive… we won’t go).

Crossin my fingers ;-)

Gimpy and quackers

That’s right, the title is correct. We have a new addition to our array of animals in the back yard now. I am sitting out side reading no other then War and Peace ;-) that’s right that 1300 plus classic that I never though id read and I am sure countless Peace Corps Volunteers get the chance to read during our schedules…. When my host mom comes around the corner with a duck in her hands and says look what I found!
This guy who is 1 month old and almost the size of a full grown chicken some how made its way into our yard, nobody knows how cause we have and fence and he can’t fly. Anywho we put some food down for him and some water, he guzzles them down and then walks around scared to death of us. We have a little gimpy chicken that I need to take a picture of, I hope to attach it here… anyway his mom doesn’t want him back after sitting on him breakin his legs where my upon my host mom had to nurse him back to health and now he gimps around the yard by himself. But he is scared of the duck and the duck just wants some company, so they are a funny sight to watch waddle around the yard.

Anyway, I got my computer out to show my host dad what a pressure washer was and then with that I got the idea to look up duck calls. With that I set off to have some fun with our new friend. I went to google put in duck calls and then began to call the duck for thigns like feeding time, or just for him to come close… he was really confused then after some time I just felt bad because I was growing a little attached to him knowing in 2 months he would lose his head and he would be meat… that’s a horribly depressing way to end that little snip… sorry. A happy ending is that last night the gimpy little chicken and duck snuggled next to each other as orphans and had a good night sleep.. (true story).

I am a peace corps volunteer

I came home last night soaking wet from the rain. Its was 10:30 at night, I had just spent about 4 hours discussing this summer camp which has turned into a fiasco of the highest magnitude. To spare the details and angry words… there is a big problem with planning over here… there is a summer camp that might or might not happen that I am not really even a supporter for but have been dragged into it through acquaintances.

And I am now in charge of getting the budget done. It is now 6 am and I am waking up to do this get this budget done, then go to the store to price items so I can meet with a woman who is possibly the most difficult woman I have ever worked with. She talks to me with a tone and attitude that I would really only let me own mother get away with or possibly my future wife after 10 years of marriage and I just take it.

So long story short, I worked with this difficult woman finished up, walked home in the pouring rain through the complete darkness, in my sandals, sloshing through puddles, dodging potholes with the light of my cell phone under a umbrella. As im walking I see a car in the distance, I quickly jump to the side of the road as far as I can from the street, but of course he turns right next to my spot runs right over a huge puddle, I prepare, turn the umbrella to the side to repel the onslaught only to angle the umbrella wrong and take a tidel wave of dirty water all over me.

Who else would put up with crap? After screaming a few obscenities after the car I started laughing, and smiled the whole way home. :)

Castle

This is infront of the baron of all the gypsies house. Farina, Eric, Two germans i forgot thier names then me :)

Here are some castle pictures in Sorroca


More caslte pictures. find me ;-)

This was our ride to Sorroca.


7.13.08

A couple of weeks ago I went to Sorroca, a city about 4 hours by hitch hiking to the east of my town Edinet. I heard of the castle over there, and their large population of gypsies and their giant houses in this location known as gypsy hill.

Any who I set off with farina my German traveling companion and hitched our way there. It luckily only took 2 different vehicles to get there. The first was a van with one window and the second was a very large dump truck hauling sand.

The castle was neat. I really enjoy going and looking at castles given we don’t have a single real one in America or anywhere near Kansas. And most of the castles here are older then America by a good amount of years. So I went there, I saw the castle, I walked along the river walk, I saw gypsy hill and had a good time.

I met up with two more Germans who I met randomly on a previous date and another peace corps volunteer. The castle was laughed at by the Germans who have “real” castles in their home country but it was still impressive enough for me.

No I don’t know the name of that tree

7.13.08

This is just a quick culture note from my observing the types of questions I am receiving here as an American stranger. Everybody points out trees, and plants and everything and asks me what they are called in English. My consistent response has been I don’t have a clue.

It is a sad fact that I don not know the names of really any plants or trees in nature. Just the same I am from Kansas and we do not have a huge amount of plants and trees growing in our plains but just the same im not sure I could really pick out the trees from my home state that might grow here.

Everybody here knows the names of the trees… they may only know them in Russian for the most part but at least they know them. It is a gap for me and my association with the nature around me. Also, all of the houses are covered with potted plants. It is a big deal. In my room right now where I am sitting I can spot 12 potted plants. I live in a jungle :).

The bench project (a fost n-a fost)

7.13.08

"It was, no it wasn’t." That about sums up our bench project in the park. Quick recap, I had a project development volunteer group. Im going to loosely say I had a group because after the first 3 weeks it was staggered attendance and productivity.

The group of high school students, went through some brain storming ideas on things that they would like to see their community have. From there we did a little critical thinking and then selected a project. From there we wrote a project proposal, and with this we could develop into a request for money from either the mayor’s office, the community itself, high school students, and even local businesses.

I did not want to write a grant for this project because I am trying to show or maybe learn myself how to get projects in this country done without the needs of outside funding. Long story short, we fell short on asking the community, mayors office and the high school students. We were in the process of developing a marketing plan asking for money from a local business in exchange for some marketing and publicity for them which we could provide when we hit a brick wall then the project magically was completed.

The brick wall was the lack of enthusiasm on the project. It is summer, the volunteers had left or were working. I tried to call a meeting and only 2 showed up. About 3 days after meeting I noticed the benches were being repaired by some workers. I asked around, found out the organization in charge of making the park beautiful got wind of our desire to do this project and thought it was a good idea. So they just went a head and did it!

This is a huge step given its been nearly 20 years since these benches have been usable and now they are painted and repaired completely. Sure it would have been great to say, we did this ourselves, raised the money and did the repairs with our own hands like we had planned but I am just as happy with this result. Some adults who knew about our desire to get this project done were angry that this other organization did the repairs because it was “our” project. I think they need to look at the big picture… we have new benches :).

Emergency injection

So im hanging out at my friends apartment a couple of weeks ago and she comes down with a fever. I brushed it off as if she was just over reacting to feeling bad. But as time went on she really didn’t say to much about it. Her sister came in the room feels her head and says whats wrong. She said she is hot and she has a fever of like 38 degrees celcius or something there abouts. I don’t know what that means because good o’l America uses some crazy non metric system!

Well the cure for her fever is quickly on display. The sister grabs a bottle of vodka out of the cabnit and starts pouring it on her hands then rubbing my friends arms vigorously then proceeds to her legs then followed by her neck. From there she bundles her up with socks and a blanket and wait for her to sweat it out to break the fever…

I had never heard or seen this in my life and I had a hard time keeping the smile on my face or mouth from gaping open in amazement at this technique, but what do I know. Anyway… about an hour or so later she was still feeling crappy. I got her to eat something but she quickly felt tired and sick and laid down the couch to rest. I took her temperature and it said something like 39.4 or something.

Her sister and her friend had left to go the lake or something and she calmly tells me that we need an ambulance. By then I was really concerned, because neither of us knew the number to get this job done. We end up calling her sister figuring it out and about 10 minutes later I hear the sirens.

Now given my experience with seening ambulences in this country.. ( mainly used as a taxi for friends of the driver or lucky hitch hikers) I was a little scared this tinly weird bus thing was going to come here. But sure enough it arrived and in came two people. The first one was a women in a open lab coat with the little heart checker around her neck. The second was a man in sandles and what looked to be a tool box for repairing cars. I think he also doubled as the driver/mechanic.

So after a few questions the man who had been reading a cooking book uninterested in the conversation decides to pop into the conversation by saying, I think we need an injection! INJECTION!? Ya, so she calmly rolled over and he popped this 2 inch long needled out and syringe out of his tool box and jabbed her in the toosh.

From there they said she needs to take some rehydration packets… (and buy them at the pharmacy because they don’t have them) and she should be ok. He asked her if she had been in any moving vehicles the past 2 days. She answered maybe 2 days ago but she can’t remember. He goes that was probably it! The CURRENT! 2 open windows spells disaster for anybody caught in the wind passage, she needs to be more careful he said then walked to the door with the chemist… I mean doctor. Then waited patiently for the sister to pay them a bonus for coming on an insured visit… I don’t know the amount but it made me a little sick. I will never call an ambulance again.

Working in the field for the grandma

So I have begun workin in the field again for that older women I met in the field on a walk. I did some work about 2 weeks ago but after farina told me it looked as though I wasn’t doing it right I never went back for fear the old women would be angry at me for doing my free labor incorrectly.

Well last week I ran into her on the street while I was with farina. She came up and was very happy to see me. She told me how good of a job I had done. I had passed by the field only the day before to witness where I had worked the corn was easily the highest around and that maybe I had correctly weeded with my hoe in a fashion that would encourage the growth of the corn not hinder it.

So anyhow I quickly blamed my not coming by to work more on farina’s errant observation which was quickly rewarded by a quick scolding from the old women upon farina. I really left her out hanging there but it was in good fun and a little revenge given how my previous 6 hour effort left me feeling bad about myself rather then happy for doing a good deed.

Anyhow I have spent the past 2 days putting in a total of 7 hours of work in a field overgrown with weeds. The old women gave up on it because she said she is too old and her help turned to alcoholism. So now im fighting the weeds that were allowed to grow too long for anybodies good hoping to earn a little respect from the surrounding people working in the field so I can then approach them with my questionnaire for my work.

Unfortunately I haven’t really seen anybody out there the past two days. Just a few broken hoes to and a sun day to show for my effort.

Pictue posting

I thought i looked cool here, this is another excursion picture. thats farina flashin the peace sign.

This was the kind of scenery we were exposed to on our excursion

Thats the gang from england with me and farina.

This is why i love villages. This is what the houses look like

This is the Cave "Castel"

days in june

6.15.08 12:04

I am doing fairly good right now. Let me try to recap a little bit here. I finished off last week at work. Nothing all to exciting happened to my knowledge. I am kind of in the grind of things just living day to day falling into some sort of normalcy here. I spent the weekend with a phil and some friends down in the central part of Moldova. We had a nice relaxing time just walking around, laying around just speaking English and talking about our futures. We spent some time with some Moldovans and went out to the forest near a lake and made a fire, ate some shishcabobs and allowed the mosquitoes to feast on us.

This week at work I spent my time working a little on that bench project. Wrote out a few marketing strategies for us to raise the money. I also completed my brochure for my agriculture extension office. I have completed the questionnaire as well and plan on getting out and trying to put the word out for our organization. I get crummy feedback from my partners on it, I mean they give me the whole oh good look at you well done kind of speech but I can’t convince them in the importance of it. They still don’t understand the goal of our organization, or if they do they just don’t care and realize my efforts here might put more work on them.

I spent one day in the field with my partner. We weeded around some rows of watermelons then for about 3 hours or so then spent a little time in the Russian steam bath then went off to work to finish the rest of the day toasting beer as we sat in our office. (I sipped my cup of beer trying appease my partner while not ruining the day by getting drunk at work).

One of my evenings I spent behind one of the high schools exercising on the jungle gym apparatus they have there. I started just doing pushups and pull up variations when some teenagers came up and started working out too. We conversed for a while and showed each other different variations of workouts. I was impressed by the flexibility in skill of one of the boys who could do some really crazy variation pull ups exercises. We will all meet up again in the future and hopefully I found some new workout buddies.

Thursday morning I went the market with my partner to write down produce prices and walk around killing time. Some woman selling cherries and strawberries gave me a free bag full for some reason. I didn’t protest thanked her and then ate them as we walked.

Thursday evening I went with the people from the center for the children (so Farina, my Romanian professor, and the director of the center) to meet some volunteers from England. They are all medical students studying in Edenburrow, Scotland (that’s not spelled right.. don’t’ care) . There goal is to come to Moldova and find a organization or project that other medical students can come and volunteer during the summer for like 3 week stints. … So we all met them and then had dinner at Farina’s house. It was fun to talk to them and translate… (though Farina was the expert in translating, a really humbling experience for my language).

Friday I spent my morning cleaning my room then the rest of the day at the center with the kids. We (the volunteers from England, Farina and me) got them together and went to the stadium and played frizbee and a hacked version of baseball. This time with my bat I took from Chisinau just to make the game a little more dangerous. Then later that day we went to a local summer camp that the kids stay at for a period of up to two weeks. The camp was really cool, with little houses depending on which group you were ( such as the elephant group, heart group, swan group… they all had drawn on their faces).

I was just tagging along with the volunteers to see what kind of games they were going to play with the kids. (300 kids). I ended up leading a group of about 50 kids in some random games, like the hookie pokie, duck duck goose, and head shoulders knees and toes). After all of that madness we were guests at the kids concert they put on, which was a just a bunch of skits/dances the kids did to music. They were all decked out with leaf costumes and everything. (did I mention our transport to and from the camp was an old ambulance van?... well it was.. and it was awesome ;)

Saturday farina and I took the group on a excursion to a small village outside of the town. We took them to this town about 15 minutes away then wandered around asking people where this castle that some person told us about. We carried some old woman’s groceries for her as she led us about 20 minutes of the way till she found her house then we just wondered down the road in the direction the womans pointed us in. we actually luckily stumbled upon a group of 16 year olds carrying food and drinks and were all heading in the same place. So we tagged along, I got stuck carrying the other side of this bag with about 50 pounds of water and drinks in it. We sweated and slipped on the mud as we made our way to our goal. We found it after a good hour walk through this rainforest type environment up hills and down valleys. We then discovered the castle was just this cave. We snapped a few pictures and then some scenery pictures then made our way back the long hike back to the road to grab the last transport heading back to the town.

So all in all it was a good week. I made my way through gardens eating fresh strawberries from gardens, cherries off trees, made some new friends, locals and foreigners, cleaned my room and did a little work for my organization. Peace Corps.

picture post!

Thats me in my Baseball outfit!
That is our front entrance to the house. My host mom sure loves the flowers.





Just some spring pictures... or I guess the start of summer.

Click on the pictures to expand them.

where do i start?

6.4.08 19:04

Where have I been? What have I been doing? Good questions but I’ll most likely just wrap that up as fast as I can here. Lets see, the back thing was bad. I left of laying on the floor in pain. It got worse. I couldn’t stand up for about a day in a half. Then after that I could only sit up for a short while or walk just a small distance. But I recovered.

I painfully wrapped up our bench plan, put it together the pieces that they kids had done and filled in the best I could the areas they had yet to fill in. I worked out the budget making everything look nice with the only requirement being an editing job by them followed by them going to the school director then asking for donations from the kids at school.

Unfortunately, that week they needed me to go with them to school I had to be in Chisinau with the other members of my group for an action packed 5 days of seminars and training program extravaganza! Wasn’t all that thrilled with it, though the language part went well as I was able to communicate my needs to the teacher this time, since my language has improved a little. ( I am still weak, I can’t really carry on complicated conversations but I can get by) It is funny though the people whos Romanian is their second language as well seem to understand me better then native Romanian speakers. Such as most of the Russian speakers in my town that know Romanian understand me and we don’t care when we both leave out grammar that other might pick up and on get confused about.

Among my adventures in Chisinau, I had a fun 3 hour walk in a par of the city I had never been in with a good friend of mine Darren after we both got on a Maxi Taxi bus with the number to take us back to our hotel. No problem except we got on at 10:45 at night and they busses stop running after 11. And little did we know the bus was going in the opposite direction and as soon as it hits 11 the driver pulls over to the nearest bar and buys beer telling everyone to fend for themselves. (we were the only ones that didn’t know this and were left to our own devices and sense of direction).

We made it and had a good time just wondering around (and by no skill of our own finding our way back to the hotel.) we walked 3 hours before find a taxi who took us on a 3 minute ride to our hotel.

Nowadays my mind is occupied too much with being as productive as possible. I am constantly fighting an uphill battle here with attaining productivity here but I am fighting it… because if im not my mind or drive or whatever the heck it is that nags at me tells me to do something.

Last week me doing something was going to work, taking off my ipod out of both ears not just one ear like I had been doing and trying desperately to talk to someone. It really didn’t work but I felt better smiling and trying to be social. Once I got to work I just sat there and bugged the heck out of my partners trying to figure out something to do and putting pressure on them to take me places.

One of the days I went to work for an hour and left to go push some handicapped children with farina in the park to change stuff up. It was a really nice day that day. Almost every day after I got back from work around 2 or so in the afternoon I went to the stadium with some of the children from the center and we played frizbee and baseball and soccer.

Baseball I should have gotten a picture of it was two cigarette packets for bases two gloves, which is all I have and ball. The bat was a creation by one of the kids who went to a random trash pile found a plastic 2 liter bottle filled it with water and rocks, heavy and awkward . but we had a fun.

Highlight of my week was when a man from Chisinau came to visit our work (audit our work) and I was able to ride around with him and my main partner to 5 different villages where our local consultants work at to see how their work is going and what they need to change.

I learned a little bit about the different villages and got to see how they work. The auditor studied marketing and was hell bent on telling the consultants to make their offices very clean and repaired and to hang signs outside of the building to tell people they work there (very elementary marketing but very necessary). I was surprised when 2 of the places had no sign or anything telling people of their place of work.

This weekend we played baseball (our American volunteer team vs the best Moldovan team in moldova) and we got hammered somewhere around 26 to 4.

http://www.protv.md/stiri/sport/meci-amical-de-baseball-la-cojusna.html

That is a video link. They had one of the national tv stations come and show the Moldovans how awful we are. L our problem was lack of practice. In all honesty if we practiced once a week and more then just one pitcher on our team we could hold our own and win. I guess I hope we could :)

This week .. well I spent some time in Peresecina with the old host family. I got to work in the fields for a good half a day hoeing the dirt in the cornfield. I really miss that environment over there. The small town village and the great food and the feeling of family over there.

So I got back Tuesday afternoon. Went to work after I ate lunch around 1 then hung out at work till 4 when farina called me to meet up. We talked a bit (she doesn’t have anything to do now that its summer and the kids stopped showing up to the center). We decided to hike to some far away forest in the distance and I got to see more agriculture getting outside of the city then I knew existed around my city. On our way back we were stopped by this old woman hoeing in here field speaking Russian (without teeth I might add, which makes a language I don’t’ understand even harder to understand) then finally she resorted into some Romanian after a hardy effort to get us to understand Russian. I told her I could help her in her field and she offered me about $30 to do the whole thing. I said no but id come the next morning and do some work if she didn’t mind. She said she didn’t and then we left. So that was yesterday, so this morning.

So I woke up early made some eggs and bread asked my confused host dad if I could borrow a hoe. The conversation went like this…

Me: Hey, Can I take a hoe out of the garden.
Him: Why, what are you doing?
Me: I am going to the field to hoe
Him: who are you going with? Why?
Me: By myself, I don’t know the persons name who’s field im working in.
Him: I don’t understand. But ya take the hoe.

So I took it, went to the field and started working from 7:30 till 12. It felt good to get out there again in the field and do some work like that. My back doesn’t like me for it. But I got some work done. Maybe about 1/5 of the work needed to complete it.

After that I went home grabbed lunch then went off to work. I sat in the office for the rest of the day and talked with one of my partners. I looked over an excel sheet he had that had his hours and then a percentage column next to the hours. It was a really messed up way of putting in your hours and his math was off. We had a fun little battle on math addition me using excel formulas and him his calculator and piece of paper. We both agreed excel rules but the table we were filling out was not correct so we decided to blame the math errors on the guys in Chisinau. ;-)

Out side of that, I gave my partner my plan of action which he told me was dumb but I told him I could not and would not and can’t just sit in the office playing card games on the computer like they might do.

My idea goes like this, I make a little marketing bulletin about our organization where I live with a little bit of who we are what do we want to do, what can we do, and a list of contact numbers. Along with this is a questionnaire asking simple questions like what type of agriculture have you done I the past, what worked what didn’t want did you learn…. What are you doing now… is there any information you contacts we can help you with? Oh ya by the way our service is free! So come and check us out! Buy some really cheap books on specific crops… and so forth.

My partner claims its stupid because he is all negative and claims everyone knows everything about everything in moldova so we really don’t need our organization. That, and claims the only reason our organization is around is because America donated a crap ton of money to get it all started and set up and they are just there to get a pay check. (all true, as I have observed the same).

And onward goes the mission to try to bring knowledge about our organization to people who don’t need it. But at least I will be doing something. I plan on going out on foot through the fields asking people and just talking to people. Either way I will be seeing agriculture and meet some interesting people… that is if they speak Romanian. The questionnaire part I am doing to find a legitimate project to do here. I can’t ask my partners because they just do what they want, it’s the people in the field with the tiny plots of land we should be catoring to, not ourselves…. It’s a wonder nobody comes to the seminars… so I am going to try to use the method of surveying them, then teaching that plan to the other consultants then we all do it, find out what the people want then go about doing it. I plan on doing atleast one demonstration plot based on the information if it is relevant.

Other then that I am just trying to smile more, enjoy life a little more, maybe starting learning language a little more…

back pain and complaining

5.18.08 8:30


Awww my back! I am laying on this foldout couch right now in a lot of pain. Its Sunday morning I just threw my back out and now I have the whole day ahead of me to try to recover. I dunno, my host dad thinks its because I was running outside and then took off my shirt (because it was fairly hot out) and the change in air temperature on my back caused my back to lock up. I dunno it could be the case. I ran about 5 laps then stripped the shirt. By the time I got to 10 and started to sprint the straight away instant lock down and here I am whining about it.

This week ugg was a set back. Just as I was coming off of a week of trying to get things figured out with my work and had begun going to local villages peace corps called me Monday afternoon and said we have a driver in the area in 10 minutes get your stuff and meet him at this location. I was in the middle of hide in seek with the kids (very busy) but I complied. I figured it was just gonna be a one shot deal and I would be back the next day. I took nothing with me but a book and a change of underwear. So I get to chisnau and they are closed for the day so I have to stay the night. I get my diagnoses Tuesday that I would be there till Thursday getting some rabies booster shots. Ugg… So I spent the week in Chisinau hangning out with other people who are sick leave. It was not a horrible time but I felt worthless.

The worst part about the stay was the negativity. There was some older volunteers there I was able to talk to about where I was and my concerns on the rest of my service being productive and what not. They all had some very discouargeing things to say for the most part. When I talked with other members in my group there they were in the same boat as I was with partners who really had nothing for them to do and they were just kinda killing time at their site waiting for something to come up. The older volunteers were voicing there frustrations that even after being here all this time people here they have met don’t really want them to be there unless they can write them grants or the volunteer does the work for them (either by writing the whole grant, writing the whole project and carrying it all out themselves). And guess what after the volunteer gives up on the job as a facilitator they are more happy, feel more productive and their counterparts seem to be happy they received money for a grant or credit for something they didn’t do. I know I am being extremely negative here, and I know this can’t be true for everybody but it was just depressing to listen to.

The problem with this is that once this active volunteer who took the time to write a grant or a project or created some program leaves so does any hope of sustainability. Unless the partner or host country national gets involved and learns and cares about the project the idea, the passion runs out. This idea of sustainability is the hardest thing to work for but it is also the best possible solution to any problem out here. My experiences this week were discouraging. I fell into that category of volunteer I realized that was about to just do the work, or write the grant just to feel productive. On this bench project for instance I made the volunteers write the project but they only wrote 75% of it. That was 2 weeks ago. And to get them to finish the rest was becoming impossible. So I wrote it, I wrote it badly given my language ability but I did th work, I organized everything and felt like finally this is done! Then I got some of them to meet up with me finally and had them correct or rewrite what I wrote. You know what… I failed! I went from facilitator to doer. I did this because the school year is over soon. And part of the plan is to raise money from the schools and we have to get this plan done before we can raise the money. And with 2 weeks left to go we had to get our stuff together. Without this we miss out on a huge fundraising opportunity.. at least I hope it is a huge one because we need it.

At work I am near the point of trying to write a grant for the only partner that works for me to get him his fish pond near this lake so he can raise fish. Its not right, I don’t’ feel right about it but I think I could win a grant for it and he would be happy and so would the organization and so would peace corps because they could say I did something. But its crap! It goes all back to the idea of success here. There idea of success is that I bring money here for them, my idea is not the bring money for them but to help them raise the money for themselves and feel as if they did it. “if the coach does the push ups the athlete will not get stronger.”

Awww!!!!!! I just got up to take some ibuprofen for my back and nearly fell down in pain. I guess I really jacked myself up here. Oh geez…This is just what I need. Anyway… I made some connections yesterday meeting people responsible for the park and then someone who works closely with the mayor. All this could help me in the long run but also with this current project if I can get them involved in helping out a little. The plan now is to raise as much money as possible for the benches from the school, then mayors office and then local businesses. And I am also the only one pushing the possibility of this being a success. I am feeling a lot of negativity as if I am carrying this project on my shoulders. I feel this is something they want because they all said this is the project they wanted and people I have asked all support it I just don’t understand this can’t do it attitude. I feel as it is a challenge and I have to prove to these kids if they do some work they can get results here. It’s the work im having a hard time getting them to do.

I feel pretty helpless here, my back is shot and this bench project is in limbo. Hmm nothing really funny happened to me this week I guess… there was this drunk old man on the street that shook my hand then tried to do some karate move on me showing how if somebody gives him their hand he can break it. It was comical and this old woman of his slapped him telling him to stop. I am currently reading a book called “Lies my teacher told me, everything your American history book got wrong. “ so far very interesting, it has some interesting points thus far about how horrible Columbus really was and how the history books exaerate his feat and glorifiy his successes and down play his failures and the otracities he infact carried out. There was also a blurb about Hellen Keller and how she was an outspoken socialist supporter and all this other stuff about here. Its funny when you think about all this stuff you took as fact when really they were quite fiction or sugar coated. .. Ok this is a crummy entry but I had to get it out and down on paper here. Love you all family.

down and dirty

4-9-08 8:57

“Hello my friend” a frequent greeting I get from children who know about 6 words in English. I am about to go on adventure to talk about my last two weeks here and all of the crazy crap that has happened. Of course I procrastinated and I forgot most of what has happened in the past so hopefully this will be quick and to the point. Also please excuse any misplellings or grammar errors that might appear with more frequency given the fact that I was just savagely attacked by a huge Rottweiler and luckily escaped with just a few gauges in my leg. So in my rabid delirious state I will recount the events that has led up to this day.

Let us start with last week. I am not sure if I talked about Easter, we woke up at 6am ate and drank, then repeated that for the rest of the day. The following day was a holiday too and we didn’t have work. I read, watched movies and tried to stay sane as it rained outside. Tuesday I was able to go to work and sit and do nothing as only one other person showed up. I killed time the rest of the day like I did the previous day. Wednesday on my way to work I decided to change plans…

I decided to walk about 45 minutes down the road to a good hitching point to visit a fellow colleague in the town about 45 minutes south of me. I hitched a ride and mumbled where I wanted to go… I had never been there so I was a bit concerned I would not know how to get there but I did my best to explain where I wanted to be dropped off. Long story short, they though I was Russian and refused to speak to me in Russian saying kids these days don’t know how to speak Romanian. That was fine as I listened to them in Romanian talking about me. I just smiled and enjoyed the ride. Halfway through the ride they asked me again where I wanted to get off I told them and then they asked me if I was really from Russia. I said no America! They both said wow im sorry! HOW ARE YOUR DOING! SHAKE MY HAND! Anyway I figured it out arrived at my destination and spent the day with Darren in his town to see what he was up to.

Had a good time and made my way back home that night. The next day I went to work then because last week the center for children was closed for the holidays I decided to go visit Darren again and meet up with Phil who came up. We stayed the night, had a good time then the next day traveled south once again to meet up with a group of people in Orhei. We were celebrating the departure of two volunteers soon to be leaving. Then the following day I went to Chisinau to continue to see people and went to concert to watch our security officer for the peace corps jam on his harmonica with his band singing American cover songs. Great time. Sunday on my way back home I went to Peresecina to visit the old family. They wanted me to stay the night but I needed to get home.

So I got home, talked with the family and went to bed. So this last Monday was the day where everybody goes to the cemetery and visits deceased relatives and friends. They all spend about half a day drinking wine putting food and candles on grave sites and then we all sit and eat there. It was an interesting experience. On a side not it was a little strange at one point. There was a priest that would walk around reading what I assume was latin and blessing the graves. If you wanted this to happen to your loved ones grave you were required to follow the preist around begging him to come and bless your grave and slip him some money. It was quite unnerving. At one point this man started screaming at the priest because (in Russian this all was) he could not afford to pay the priest to bless his relatives grave and so the priest by passed him for someone who could. He hit the priest and pulled on his clothes then walked away raving and ranting for some time after. Quite an exciting time.

Tuesday I went back to work.. didn’t do anything, wait I wrote a letter I think yes, I wrote a letter in English outlining what I want out my experience here. I will then translate this into Romanian and give it to my partners outlining what I want to do. The gist of it is that I will be in the office only 2 days a week for about 4 hours then the other days will be spent going to nearby villages and hanging out with the local consultants where I can actually learn.

Wednesday I went into the office not really expecting to do anything other then begin translating my letter when my Russian partner asked me if I wanted to get out of the office. I said you bet ya! So we went to the bank, then a village where he paid to have access to a pond of sorts. Then we went out to see his land where he is going to put his own pond. From there we left and stopped off by this road and watched the process of draining a fishing pond. It was interesting I never knew how they did it. All the water drains out this tunnel where it catches all the fish that grew that year and they take their nets and scoop them up and put them in a truck.

Thursday I went to another village to visit with a local consultant to see if I could come there once a week so I can get out of the office. It was a good time. I was able to speak Romanian for about 2 hours with the consultants niece while she was given advice. This is by far our best consultant in the entire rayon. She works as a part time consultant and then part time in the local village bank where she helps people apply for credit and payback strategies. So when you combine agriculture knowledge with advice and resources on how to accomplish a agriculture idea you have a successful office. I will be spending at least one day a week I hope in her office and then ask her to set me up with some local farmers so I can just follow them around the rest of the day. Or maybe a half and half thing.

The rest of that day I spent at the center with the kids. I purchased some tiny toy soldiers (though farina was very against any aspect of war to be taught to the children) and got the tyrants building forts in this random sand rock pile we have nearby. It was a great time. It reminded me of the times I used to build sand castles with my dad and sisters in the sand box where I learned the art of crewing. After I got home from that I worked in the garden with my host dad digging very orderly rows of holes for potatoes. Of course the whole time the host mom was right there telling us how to do everything like any woman (wife) would. Anywho we got that accomplished. I enjoy helping around the house, especially learning how to do stuff I had no idea before how to do. To be completely honest I had no idea that you take small immature potatoes put them in the ground and wait for them to grow. I had no idea if you gave potatoes enough time that little seedlings sprout from them. Now I know… ;-).

Friday morning I was running around the track when these two domestic dogs ( I say domestic because their owner comes with them to the track lets them loose and has some what control over them.) So I normally do 10 circles at a even pace then after that I do four laps where I sprint full speed the straight-aways anyway I ran by the dogs at full speed and when I stopped sprinting at the end of the straight away one of the dogs closed on me. It was a rotwhiller and got me on the inside of the thigh then proceeded to tear at my sweats near my calf. Then he got the material stuck in his teeth and proceeded to rip my pants even more. I am posed to hit this animal in the face as hard as I can but I wait watching the 65 year old owner proceed to run that same distance while I dodge the dogs teeth in my calf. The owner ends up falling down on the asphalt rock turf of the track skinning up his hand before he takes control of his animal.

The then claimed it was my fault because his animal had never done this before. But whatever. He apologized and told me he would not let that dog loose in the mornings near the track anymore. So I was very happy. I finished running for a bit until the adrenaline wore down and my leg began throbbing. When I got home I inspected the wounds and they aren’t too bad. There is defiantly some teeth marks where he gauged me it could have been a lot worse. Had the inside thigh bite been about 5 inches higher I might not have my manhood anymore ;-).

Friday was also victory day for Europe. So we had a big celebration in our town. Everybody met up in the center with flowers and walked them down to this monument for WW2 for all the soldiers who had died. The mayor said some words, as well did some other local leaders. I limped along and snapped some pictures. The weekend is the weekend. I spent it in Orhei a village 2 hours south of mine and have escaped the boredom of being in my house when its raining outside. I am looking forward to talking with my parents tonight…. That’s really all I have.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY MOM!


Also here is a link to an article about human trafficking in moldova. Interesting and sad.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/05/080505fa_fact_finnegan?currentPage=1

“Adeverat, Cristos a inviat”

I am attaching some more pictures from Romania. I still don’t have all the pictures and just pulling these off face book from a volunteer who I went with that has posted some of them.

This is phil and I doing hard guy poses in burcurest ( i am diong the arnold flex)
This is is us walking up to the Bran castle or fake dracula castle as it is known... Phil and I goofing off or going to war... you be the judge :-)

That was the view outside of our hostel in Brasov. Beautiful!

This is me in bucurest hanging out with the ladies ;-)

Phil and I once again doing hard guy poses in bucurest. the building advertisment was crazy!

4.27.2008 14:38

“Adeverat, Cristos a inviat”- It is true, Christ has risen

It is Easter today in Moldova. And as uneducated as I am here about religion I don’t know how much of the world celebrates this day as Easter. I know that 90 something percent of moldova is Christian orthodox and about 90% of Moldova is celebrating Easter today so I assume it is a Christian orthodox holiday ;-). I woke up this morning at 6 to the sound of the neighbors talking loudly in the hallway outside my room. I got up to see what the commotion was about and then remembered that it was Easter and that my host dad had gone to church at 4am or thereabouts and that everyone was coming over to eat a breakfast masa with lots of wine. So I jumped in the shower shaved to look presentable then we all masa-ed it up. And drank a lot of wine for so early in the morning. I then went back to bed and slept till noon. I watched an episode of the Sapranos (which I am in to now and allow myself once a day to watch an episode. Now I am sitting outside on this beautiful day outside wrting in my journal a little paranoid of this wasp flying over my head.

I had a good weekend. Friday I set off to chisianu for our baseball game the next day. I decided If I was going to go down to Chisinau I might as well have an adventure on the way. So I called up a volunteer to the south of me on the way to chisianu and said I was going to drop in and see what work was like for him and to see his city. That was easier said then done. It takes a good 3 and a half hours to get to chisnau and his city is close to being on the way and about an hour and a half south of me. So I have never been there before and having really no idea on how to get there set off about 8am on Friday. There was a problem for me finding a maxi taxi south and I had to walk the 45minutes to the bus station instead of just picking up one on the side of the road as they go by. Then I got quickly haggled into taking the bus to beltz which is fine because they have a big bus station and I figure it would be a sinch to get to get to that town from there. So I get there… stand around the station and asked a few people who told me to wait over there and there should be a bus sometime. I got tired of waiting and the busses to Chisinau from there didn’t want to bother taking me only 30 minutes on the 2 hour ride to chisnau and drop me off because it wasn’t worth there effort. I got sick of waiting when I see a buss drive by about 25 yards out that says the name of the town I wanted to get to. So I take off running after it and get on.

So I am riding on this trolly bus kinda thing crawling no faster then maybe 30km/hr (I don’t’ know the conversion here). But it was slow! And standing. We finally turn off the main drag and i watch everyone get off one by one then I realize nobody that was on the bus when I got on was still there but like one person. So I ask this women and she tells me we are in Singeri Noi. I needed to get to just Singeri. Crap… she said I could wait till 2 and there would be a bus there ( it was only about 11am) I said nuts on that is there another way. She said yes and then told the driver to stop at this intersection where I could getr off and hitch a ride from there to the town or atleast close to it. That’s what I did and I got off and walked for a bout a good hour until I found the town! 4 and half hours after I had set off. But I made it there and It was a really nice day out. Had a good chat with Gerald the volunteer there about life and how thigns are going for him. He is 53 and works in the same organization I do but in a different part of moldova. His place of work had an volunteer who ended up leaving because of how corrupt they were and how unwilling they were to work with him. The specificially asked for an older volunteer the next time and got one. Gerald has been having success at least in there eyes because he will write grants.

This brings me to the reason I went there. Not only for some good conversation because Gerald is a great guy and I like talking with him but because he had won a grant for a laptop and projector for his organization and my partner who has had nothing to do with me and has not included me in anything told me that Gerald had gotten a laptop and projector and now they want one and want me to write a grant for it. I don’t even want to get into how much of a problem I have with this but I said well see and went to visit Gerald to talk about how he won it and why he wrote the grant. We talked a while I gave him my reasons why I didn’t want to write a grant for my organization to get them a lap top. He understood immediately and then started second guessing his grant and said he would keep on eye on it and hope that his organization really needed it and used it accordingly.

After having lunch with Gerald I trekked it back to the main road and waited there with my arm out trying to wave down a car or bus or anything to get me into town. I got a bmw to stop for me and we flew all the way there going no slower then 170km/hr at any one time. I was a tad scared at times but I did have a seatbelt on which is more then I can say for anything else I have ridden in since I have been here and I didn’t really know how fast 185km/hr really was so when we were going that fast I just pretended it was 60mph :-) sorry mom don’t get worried here!

I stayed the night with my old host family then went into chisnau for our baseball game the next day Saturday. (yesterday) I hitched again into town.. I am beginning to like hitch hiking now that I can communicate well enough that I can tell them where I need to go. I got the game and had a great time. We played the same team we had played the previous 2 times. The first game losing by over 20 the second by about 3 or 4 and this game we won! Not to brag or anything but I kicked some butt. I threw out 4 guys. 3 of them at second base. I feel like I am playing better now then when I was in highschool. My arm is a lot stronger and I don’t have a problem winging over to second. I was able to play the full 7 innings up and down as catcher mainly because I have been running doing lunges and squats out on the track every other day and it has really helped my back. Because the first 2 games I could barely play 2 innings without having to come out and get a sub because of the back pain. This game I had no pain and played great. I also hit a ground roll double to the out field and scored every time I got up to bat. We all played really well. It was just our day and we needed it! I had a good time Chisinau after the game we all went out for pizza and laughed about that game. I ended up not even leaving until 6:30 that evening and because of the lack of busses the night before Easter I hitched a ride in the back of this tiny car with 3 guys smashed against the door. We had good conversation and were surprised when I said I was American and all congratulated me on learning Romanian and how many Russian speakers still don’t’ put the effort to learn it when they been here for over 18 years since they broke off from Russia.

This week had its ups and downs. As usual. ( sorry for the poor transition). My bench repair group of high school students did come through with the signatures. We have over 500 names and signatures who support the project. We will use this to go the mayor and ask for some money for the materials while we supply the labor and time. We might also use it for local business with our plan to hopefully promote marketing for their business by them supporting the community. And even asking the high school kids to cough up 5 lei a piece (50cents) to support the project which could easily pay the bill for the benches. (just on the signatures a lone that would be $250 and could repair around 5 benches at least with new paint wood and everything).

Work is slow as all heck. I spent more time at the children center helping poor vegetable oil in 1 liter bottles out of a 20 liter barrel. Messy operation that was. The center gave the poorest of the kids noodles and vegetable oil for Easter. Thursday I got to go to a village with the organization down the hall. They worked with the other former peace corps volunteer and had a better reason for getting a volunteer outside of being a grant writer. I got to go to a seminar provide my laptop so they could show pictures to a group of farmers in the nearby town. It was part of a sharing experience program where they had a local farmer go to Romania and learn some techniques they use over there and share there experience. To help his presentation they used my laptop to show pictures of his experiences. It looked somewhat productive and I enjoyed the experience. They keep telling me I should just go work with them and how if my organization doesn’t have anything for me to do they could sure use me. This is getting a little touchy because my organization sees this and is very protective of me. And I have built up relationships with my coworkers and feel about about the whole situation. I almost want to offer them a deal in where I write them a grant for thre time and trouble with me and then leave. We will see it might motivate them to do something with me. But I have had it with sitting in that office. And will spend my time out of the office for now on, may it be just walking around in the local smaller villages by myself or working with another organization or what not. I have been getting negative on my organization and angry with the peace corps for my place ment but its not my directors fault. We have to many volunteers to place and not enough places to put everyone. I will find my own way here and for now I am learning.

I am going to travel more around moldova see more learn more and hopefully find my role here.