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.