Vin and Jess with their partners in Cahul.

Slavic and Georghe work on Slavic's truck.

A foal trains with the horses to pull the wagon.



This past weekend, Vincent and I went to visit our future permanent site, Cahul. Cahul is a larger oras (town) in the south of Moldova. Am mers cu rutiera prin terenuri galben de multe floaria souaralui. (We went in a rutiera through yellow fields of many sun flowers.)
In Cahul we met our future Mama Gazda (host mom) and some of her family. We had cafea with the Medicul Sef (Cheif of the Medical Center) and met the Principal of the school Jess would be working with. The head of a medical center for women gave us a tour. Jess will be working at her medical center as well. We had time hanging out with Vin's future partners. All of these new colleagues we will be working with seem great. We are excited to improve our language skills to work with them even more efficiently. One of Vin's partners has produced a documentary on the orphans in Moldova. One of Jess's education partners commented that nothing is by mistake...that us in Cahul was similara cu samantsele de papadie a suflat de vant (similar to dandylion seeds blown by the wind). We are looking forward to our time there, though we will miss our current villages and host families.

To all of our wonderful youth from Eastbrook - during this somewhat rigorus and busy pre-service training, I have sometimes felt like the "camper" on a wilderness trip - or the student on a retreat. (a reversal of roles - hey) We love all of you and have such fond memories on the many trips we took together.

Gradina Mea in Casa Mea

On paper, 1 out of 4 working age Moldovans are working abroad, though the other day we organized some activities in a field in our village of 3000 and when we asked the kids to raise their hands in they had a parent living in Italy, Moscow...at least half the hands went up. We then asked how many had both parents abroad and I would say it was about 1/4. Moldovans are resiliant. Here are a people who have had to learn to make the most of difficult situations and survive through the hardest of times. Yet another result of collectivism are that Moldovans have these incredible gardens that they all know how to extensively cultivate throughout the year. In my village, the property where they reside on rough average is at least 2-3 acres but there are large fields of corn and potatoes which line the villages. At first I thought these belonged to business or wealthy individuals until my family took me out to their 8 acre plot. Each family int he community owns a section and works it extensively. Every tree on their property and even along the road bears fruit of some kind, sweet cherries, sour cherries, apples, pears, fresh apricots. Their gardens are packed with cucumbers, peas, beans, tomatoes, rasberries, strawberries, dill... Grapes (poamme) grow everywhere and every property has a large cellar dug into a hill where they have oak barrels of homemade wine. They make tons of jam, large bottles of compote (fruit juice), they eat a ton of the sweet corn and dry the rest in their attics to hand grind as feed for their chickens, rabbits, pigs... Their food is local, organic and incredibly delicious. Sounds like paradise right? That's why Jessica and I in our naivety have struggled to understand why so many members of their families have gone overseas, "Why don't they just live off the land and enjoy themselves." But all of this hard work that they do is their just to supplement their turbulent enconomic future and past. The stark reality is that it is simply not enought to survive on, which means going abroad can be a negative mindset towards their prospects here but it is also in many cases a dreaded necessity. Those that we have met love their country, their lives here, their rich culture and unified communities.
How did this economic collapse occur? How can the Moldovan economy be reinvigorated? Jessica and I have learned much in regard to this already and no doubt it will be the topic of many of our blog entries. What i know now is that we will need the creativity, prayers and support of our communities back in the states to use their expertise in order to wrestle with the various dimensions of their struggles and potential solutions. I already have tons of questions for those of you who majored in economics, business, and environmental sciences. Jessica and I hope that we can bring the beauty and the current struggle of the Moldovan way of life into your world so that you can collaborate with us on ways to make their future successful.
Salutari Moldova!

Rabbits (iyepuri) and sink (lavoar).

Here is a video of my summer home and school in Moldova. My host family is incredible and I will miss them when I have to leave at the end of the summer.

here's a quick video i took of jess this weekend visiting my host family :)

I had my first trip to Jess host site (Bardar) last weekend. I asked my host mother is I could take a flower from the garden to Jess' host mother, when I came back from class my host mother Maria had prepared two large buquets, one for Jess and one for her host mom. Unfortunately I didn't know that it is customary to carry flowerstop down in Moldova until you present them, otherwise you may be mistaken for a man going to propose.


Here are some pics of our first true time together since we arrived. It had been a long three weeks and we finally had a chance to walk the vinyards surrounding Bardar, to talk and pray together.

We we able to go to Chisinau (the capital) last week and walk through the massive piatsa (open market). There's a really nice section where the vendors have everything nicely labled and then there are sections towards the edges where you can find a person selling their 1 ipori (rabbit) sold on the ground next to a few heads of varza.

Pumpa

Here's tatul meu (my host dad) Radu and I digging an enclosure for a new pump he's installing for potable water. It was nice to roll up my sleeves and do some manual labor here in Moldova.

Entry 2- 19 Veniri, Junie 2009

The first week felt like almost a month. The daily challenge of uncertainty, combined with the volume of language intake and the rigor of the PC training schedule made everything appear rapid and immensely slow all at the same time. I was struggling with dizzy spells all last week but they are definitely lessoning this week. It is astonishing how much language we are taking in because we have four hours of language training a day and we are living with host families. The first week was filled with tons of simple victories like successfully interacting with people in the village or using simple phrases around the house. Now that we are in the second week the expectations have stiffened due to the sheer volume of things we should know how to say (ie. verbs to have, to want to be able to…). This week however has been more frustrating because we should know how to say a variety the recall is simply not there yet. Everyday there are moments where you simply desire to give up, go to your room and shut the door--this I will not do. Below are pictures of my LTI (language trainers) and a great pgoto of the public transportatyion in Moldova , which consists of minibuses with a few seats and literally unliited capacity.