holidays are over!

1.23.2008 13:04

I am feeling a change in the way I am going to present information. This whole write a day by day recap becomes tedious and cumbersome for me. I almost dread it more then I enjoy it and that is when we get problems like nearly 2 weeks before I update my blog. If I can I will recall what I want when I want but more or less this might turn into what I am thinking about at the time and might get more intimate then it has previously been. Or I could possibly revert back to my previous way of writing.

These last 2 weeks have been a good time. I have officially survived holiday season here in Moldova. It was not easy or productive but it is over now. Never have I witnessed a holiday season like it anywhere before nor do I think I will ever again in a country outside of eastern Europe. I am so holidayed out I just want to work every day for 15 hours to catch up. I spent some down time reading a little, forming plans and strategizing what I will be doing here for the next 2 years and how I can most effectively spend my time here. I have yet to come to any real conclusions though I have given it much thought.

Going along my former train of thought I am going to my best to be a learner here. An observer and student of my city and culture of Moldova. I realize I want to travel around Moldova to different sites seeing the entire country as much as I can. I also want to feel some sort of accomplishment when I finish my time here. To do that I have to plan accordingly. I am doing a lot of reading on foreign aid and opinions how to correctly go about doing it and how to not go about doing it. The consensus is sustainability. “gift giving” is not helping. Everything I do here, I have sustainability in the back of my mind… how can I contribute to this community that will make a difference in the future down the road.

So… anyway. I am meeting with this group of volunteers Friday who have written a plan to beautify our city park. Problem is they have a half written plan that some of them .. 1 of them wrote this past summer. They had it hijacked by the equivalent of the “german peace corps” and now have their idea put into a plan that they don’t understand and are not really behind. The plan asks for around $4k Euro to make some changes to their park. My german counterpart is getting pressure to finish this plan and get the money. She is not thrilled because this is a hand me down project where only one volunteer was there for the idea brainstorming part and nobody else knows whats going on or why it is necessary to have the money.

I told them that I think your initial idea to help clean up the park sounds like a great idea but lets start at the beginning. But to go even farther I am proposing tomorrow (the meeting) that we organize this group better. We get leaders to step up, we get communication down and a regular meeting schedule. From there I will briefly touch on some strategies on how to go about creating a project to raising the funds if needed so they are in power and not some outside foreign aid director. In pre service training we did some worthwhile exercises on how to go about mapping your community and accessing the resources that the community already has and how to utilize them to solve identified problems.

I am going to try to get them behind learning a little about the steps in going about creating a project by identifying a need to making sure it is a community felt need by asking people in the community their opinion then combining resources with places like the mayor’s office and the local high school where there is free labor in the volunteers wanting to do some good in their community. After we have established stuff like that I will go in the basics of grant writing if it is necessary and the message of sustainability. For example if we write a project that puts trash cans in the park and we put them up and people don’t use them or they get spray painted by the local kids, or knocked over by the dogs who run wild who is going to go about correcting these problems.

I am also thinking a lot about what I want to do while I am here. I have been reading this book called Two Ears of Corn a book written to aid in agriculture extension offices. How to go about setting them up and how to make them sustainable. I am basically now planting the seeds in places I will want to work at while I am here. I have introduced myself to 2 high schools, a local center for previously trafficked people, my organization, the orphanage, the mayor’s office, and most recently a boxing club where I plan to begin training in the next week. I have also inquired into a peace corps program that holds business seminars for interested people. They give us the information they want us to talk about and we go in and do it. I just got the information and I need to study it because it is all in Romanian. It is the bare basics on many business subjects, such as the 4 P’s in marketing on to how to obtain credit.

I want to push myself in learning one of the subjects fully in Romanian so that I can travel with a group of other volunteers around the country getting my travel in and fluency with the language. It is a big commitment but I think it will most effectively reach some objectives that I want to meet in my time here.

A quick wrap up of the last two weeks is that, I went back to my old host family for my host mom’s birthday. It was a riot. There was so much food I was in awe. There were about 35 of us in all, family and friends, but mostly family. We ate and talked over a big table and then had a dance party around the table with the music. Bizarre but oddly fun.

After getting back from that, back in my village was our town party and new years the 14th of January known as the old new years. Our town had fireworks and food everywhere. I ate with some friends at my site mates house and toasted the new year before heading out to see the fire works and walk around the town. It was a good time, but I spoke way to much English.

I just got back from Chisinau (pronounced Kish e now) for our in-service language training as a group. It was a great time seeing everyone and sharing stories again. The language is coming along but I didn’t find the session all that productive. I was just happy to see everyone.

Today I am feeling kinda sick, so im taking some free time to write in my blog before heading off to the orphanage if I go.. then off to the boxing gym which I still need to find for practice from 5-7 tonight. I met the coach today because he is a friend of my partners and took time out of our busy work day ( I am being sarcastic here) to drive me to this guys house and meet him. This guy is a super nice guy, and apparently was on the major boxing sports team in the U.S.S.R. back when that was around so I am guessing he knows his stuff. The rarest thing about him is that he claims to have never smoked a cigarette or drank alcohol even once in his whole life! As a man who lives in Moldova and Lived in Russian this seems like the oddest most outrageous claim I have ever heard, but it made me respect him even more because of his commitment to his sports and health. I can relate to that determination as I basically followed along that same path as I grew up even throughout college because of my commitment to fitness.

There is the quick and dirty update. If anybody reading this has questions about anything send me an email or call my parents in Kansas and have them relay the message to me. I’d love to answer or find out any questions anybody has. I am tired, probably go to sleep now. I will try to update more frequently on a day to day thought basis from now on, sorry if this entry is lacking, its all I have the effort for now.