August 5th 2009
Friends and Family,
Sorry for the sparse communication as of late, the few days where I have been able to make it to a town with internet have been so occupied that I have been unable to check my email. This my final official week as a Peace Corps Trainee, on Saturday I will swear and oath to represent the values of the Peace Corps as I pledge to serve in the country of Moldova for the next two years (Jessica will swear in on the 18th). The last few weeks have been a whirl. Jess has been in the midst of what the health program calls the 10 day challenge where two of her partner teachers come up from Cahul and they plan curriculums for the year and have opportunities to practice teaching together in Romanian to students from a variety of ages. Jess and I really like her partner teachers and it seems that the high school she will be working at in among the best in all of Moldova--if I understood their Romanian correctly her high school has an International Baccalaureate program and she will be empower the future leaders of Moldova. I will be working with two different NGO’s. One is based out of a primary school where two young women turned a whole community around through their school and then started an NGO to see how they could help other schools. The other is associated with the activities director of the Pedagogical University in Cahul. His NGO is called Pro-Art and it’s goal is to promote social awareness through mass media and the arts. They just finished a short documentary about abandoned children in Moldova (the Unicef numbers from a few years back state that over ¼ of children have one parent abroad and 1/10 have two. From among these numbers some of these children have been left without a clear plan for who will care for them.
Our teachers and directors have repeatedly told us that Jessica and I have made incredible language progress over the past 3-4 weeks but from our perspective it is slow going. You do have breakthrough experiences. The other day I needed a haircut. A few of my fellow trainees have clippers and the skills to use them but I decided to have my eight year old host brother lead me down a back alleyway into a backyard hut surrounded by chickens and burning garbage to the “frizeria” where many Moldovan’s living in Vasieni get their hair cut. After negotiating the standard price and explaining what I hoped my hair would look like after this experience was over, I sat down and proceeded to have a half an hour conversation with the entire family, who came into the backyard to see the American getting his hair cut. We spoke in Romanian about Peace Corps, my life in America, the art of cutting hair and the type of development work I hope to do in Moldova. All very fluidly from my perspective--part of my success was that this family intuitively spoke slowly, and simply. On the walk home I was filled with the satisfaction of what I, with the help of PC, have accomplished over the past seven weeks. Meanwhile Jess is already teaching in Romanian but hey, I got a haircut.
I won’t lie. The whole “married couples separate for the summer while in training” thing has been really hard (greu) to say the least. Jessica and I have lost almost every semblance of the day in and out rhythm to our marital relationship. We text each other throughout the day when we can but in is extraordinarily difficult to plan any aspect of life together especially when most of your days and nights are already planned out for you. I know these last few weeks will seem like an eternity and that Jessica and I will probably not feel like we’re back in a rhythm again until after a few weeks of living together but we’d like to think that the intense focus we’ve been able to have on the language and integration will encourage us in the months to come. We’d also like to thank all of you who have prayed for us and stood by us over these last few months.
In the next few days I will be saying goodbye to my host family and PC colleagues. Jessica and I are very close to our host families. A host family in one sense is a room and some food on a table but in another it is an act of extraordinary vulnerability. Our families have opened their lives to us and we will be broken hearted in leaving and will miss them. They hold a sacred space for us because they are the masters of our first impressions and experiences in Moldova, our baby steps into a new world. In one sense PST has been very difficult. Jessica and I have been separate, the first few weeks consist of a level of jetlag, overload and disorientation beyond compare. Yet we have also been in a kind of protective bubble of school and scheduled activities. Now we must work. We must the find the motivation and courage within to believe we can do something good here. We must motivate ourselves to learn the language beyond the level of a child. We must model vulnerability and trust in order for the people of Cahul to open themselves to us.
Please continue to write and text us. Here is all of our info as best as I understand it now. If you want to send a package remember to send it to…
All of our love,
Vin and Jess
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