Happy Birthday Emma

We hope this video makes you smile :)

"nu ştiu?"

Regional sounds of expression? Not something I thought I would have to learn in another country. Here is a video of Jessica, Niaima (a fellow Peace Corp volunteer here) and our host mom Iulia joking about the sounds kids make in class when they don't know the answer to a question. It's kind've like this high pitched "uhh" sound but when you hear it the next two words that come out of the kid's mouth will be "nu ştiu?" (how should I know?).

Scoala Primara A. Donici

A truly amazing place to work about which I will be writing more soon. But in the meantime watch these 22 Seconds undercover and see if you can play that old Seseame St. game, "One of these things is not like the others..."

Partners and friends in Cahul

We have been writing to people about our partners here in Cahul and we thought it might be nice if you could actually see their lovely faces!

After the crisis in 98 when the currency devalued by over 30% (notjoking), my partners Galina and Mariana (principal and asst.principal) were left with the task of running a grade school with no budget for even chalk or paper and where teachers were in a holding period of up tp 6-8 months for getting paid.

Anyway, in that environment they found out how to form an NGOand realized that they could win financing from abroad if they couldlocally raise 30-50% from parents and teachers... Thus they--with alittle help of another PC volunteer some years back--have radicallychanged the infrastructure and environment of scoala primara A.Donici. It's lively, colorful, has a small library and an indoor bathroom and cafeteria... Way less than adequate for a hurting centralcity MPS school but way better than a lot of the other primary schools around here. They have empowered the teachers and parents to create activities for the students of A. Donici enabling field trips andextra curricular activities. They have also accomplished many long-term leadership initiatives for teens (service and civic initiatives...). They just finishing a renovationproject to open a room up in the school for kids with disabilities to be integrated with the rest of students for part of their education, soemthing very new and exciting for Moldova!

They possess an overall attitude of hard work and follow-through, and the organization has a strong foundation consisting primarily of the relationship between the two founding members (Mariana and Galina).They share common values and have established a long history of open and healthy communication. Further, they have a lot of respect within their immediate community (teachers, parents...), within the NGO and professional community in Cahul. We're beginning a really exciting Civic Edu project that I will soon be writing more about.






Here's an old pic with John R. and Naima (our site mates) after we frist arrived. The other two people are Jen L who was just leaving after serving in Cahul and Ion, a Moldovan now living in Great Brit.

Here's a pic of one of Jess' medical partners named Maria Dunas.

Road Trip to Cahul

These photos are old (from the end of August) but we just had to post them because they are so hilarious to us. Jess and I were picked up from the capital by her boss the school principal to be driven to Cahul.

This is a shot of Domnul Constantin feeling sorry for his car after he realized how much baggage we Americans have. You should've seen this baby try to make it up the hills with four passengers and 1000 lbs of health curriculum.

This is Domnul Costanin taking care of the flat tire due to rough roads (or perhaps too much weight).
Soon after this we overheated in total making a 2.5 hr drive turned into a 4.5 hr one. It was wonderful.

Nimic nu este întâmplător

Here is a picture of us at the apartment of some of our first friends in Cahul, Alexandru (Sasha) and Olesea and their son Oliver. Sasha is one of Jessica's two partner teachers. He and his wife met working at a youth center (similar to Jess and I) here in Cahul. Sasha was at that first site-visit in July where we sat in the director's office at her school and in broken Romanian showed pictures of all of our family and friends and spoke about our dreams and accomplishments. For a first meeting (and for cultural norms) we were a bit too accessible about our lives. Yet, my memory of Sasha is that he was just very quiet and attentive. Shortly before we left the school, Sasha said to us, "nimic nu este întâmplător" (nothing is of chance). "Întâmplător? We said." But after a few minutes of cognating we understood. When Sasha later lead us to our bus to head back to our summer host families he also said that our arrival here was like two "seminţe păpădie" carried by the wind and then mimed a little child blowing the seeds of a dandelion. We love spending time with Sasha and Olesea. They live on so little but have very spacious and vibrant souls. We are very grateful for their friendship here in Moldova.

Vinification!

About a month or so back we went to our host mom's brother's house in the nearby village of Zirnesti to participate in an afternoon of picking, hauling, crushing and siphoning in preparation for "vin nou 2009" (new wine).

This is a thing of great pride in Moldova as it should be. How many places in the world are there where almost every home grows, either collectively on the margin of town, or individually in their backyard, a diversity of grapes for their own red and white table wines.

The basic skeleton of the process is really a lot simpler than we thought, but lends itself to the science of thousands of variations for professional winemakers. You crush the grapes--gently squeezing the berries and breaking the skins to start to liberate the contents of the berries.

You allow the juice that freely runs out to gather in the vat. Drinking the juice at this stage is so sweet it can almost knock you over. Then you haul it down into the cellar or use a siphon to get it down there for fermentation, which naturally takes place for a week or two in the barrel--something to do with the yeast feeding on the sugars to produce carbon dioxide and alcohol. You can use another contraption to "press" the grape skins to get even more juice out. Most Moldovans that I have seen use this press process to make racui--which is like a type of vodka. But don't go hang out in the cellar during this boiling process. It also produces a lethal gas. Every year people perish because it is odorless. Intoxication may have something to do with this as well. And there you have it, house wine all year round. Pretty incredible.

What's a Beci?

Moldovans spend much of Sept, Oct and early Nov canning, jarring and pickling. Fruits and veggies, compared to the States, are inexpensive in late spring and early summer because they are local in the piata (outdoor market) and growing in abundance in everyone's yard; and because in winter they are expensive or in short supply.

I jarred homemade pizza sauce and Jess has become proficient in pickling cucumbers and tomatoes, making grape jams, canning peppers... Once the container is sealed you "punem in beci" or put them in the beci (pronounced betch..not kidding).

Moldovan homes don't really have basements but every Moldovan home I have seen has a beci, which is a cellar below the freezing point. Here they keep all their canned goods and most importantly, their homemade wine!

























Here also is a short series of videos of me and a neighbor apple picking at our host mom's in Cahul. What's funny about the second video is that you can here my host mom begin repeating, "domne ajute" (God help you, God help you) because she doesn't want me to go that high up in the tree. We have spent, I should say my host mom and Jess have spent many nights and weekends the last month chopping fruit and making jellies and jams... The other tree that I don't have video of us picking is a gutui tree which I never saw in the states but another volunteer told me we do have and that it is called quince?? Anyone seen it? It makes fantastic jam.