Video Update

Take the time to check out my town and my house!

My swearing in ceremony, and the Wednesday night before!

Daily

Zi Buna! Good Day!

Hopefully in the next year or so I will be greeting you all in Russian as well! I am settling in very quickly here, and as I approach week four at site I am starting to establish a routine.

I head into the office around ten in the morning, after waking up to have breakfast at around eight in the morning. After breakfast I normally refresh my cup of tea, and take in the day’s news on the BBC. After the news, I sign online quickly to download whatever emails I have from the previous day. I then put on my work clothes, normally some sort of combination of a collard shirt and a sweater. I find if I mix them enough ways it looks like I have more clothes than I actually brought with me.

My counterpart normally ditches me within the first hour or so of the day, and thus I sit and study Romanian. The plan is I stay at work until around one PM, but normally I head out after two hours around noon. I fill my afternoons up with lunch, and them maybe a visit to the local school or the mayors office. I actually think I am going to be starting to work with the Mayor on a project soon, I have a meeting with him early next week.

The weekends are brutal here though. In fact, they are so brutal for volunteers a random German Volunteer from a different organization found out I was near by and tracked me down. We met over the weekend, and it was great have a volunteer perspective outside of the Peace Corps.

Beyond that, not much is new, if you want a laugh, my monthly allowance is less than I would sometimes spend in one night at Tampa (although it may turn out to be enough!), but on the flip side my host father informed me we are having a Russian Banya room installed soon, hopefully the influx in cash I am paying will help that along!

Pe Curînd! See you soon!

drew

Ukrainian Ikea

I write to you while “Ma doare spate” “My back hurts”! I have spent the previous three nights, and the majority of today putting together furniture with my host father, Ion (pronounced like Jon with a Y.) Imagine how annoying buying anything from Ikea is in the first place, now image doing it with Ukrainian standards. For the five pieces of furniture there was one drawing and the majority of the holes were not pre-drilled.

BUT, my entire room is brand new, and I really cannot complain my family went out of there way to make me so comfortable. Not to mention, I now know the words for screw, hammer, and etc. in Romanian now. My room is directly off the kitchen, which is new, and across from the bathroom. The bathroom has insanely hot water, and is also new. A toilet is also in the bathroom, but I think that no one is supposed to use it, therefore I venture outside for the bathroom. The window in my room looks over the Prut River to Romania.
My work is good so far, but my real focus is meeting the community and learning the language. I was already given some grant ideas, but I am not going to commit to anything for a few months. Given work has been slow to start I accompanied my host father to a conference on communication and conflict in the work place that was entirely in Romanian. I understood almost everything that was said, and I really felt great leaving. Not to mention the lunch served during the conference included shots of vodka. It’s just cultural what can I say?
On to other things… the food… the random stuff...
I thought the food could not get any better when was at my last host family, but I was very wrong. Although my last host mother could bake, my new host mother is much better all around. We eat a lot of polenta and more whole grains than I had ever expected. Also, my host mother makes the tastiest borscht I have ever eaten so far, although she thinks I am lying when I tell her how good it is. Also, we eat a ton of duck here, I love duck, and it is prepared so simply, and deliciously here. We have marinated and cured sweet peppers, as well as pickles, and many other pickled veggies. All of our foods are natural and fresh. My host father owns 12 hectares of land, but is in control of over 50 hectares of land.
On to random ruminations, I showed my family the Brita Filter for cooking water, and my crazy large distiller for drinking water, and they were not totally weirded out. I am moving into my room today after a week of waiting, and I am very excited to start settling in. I have a phone jack in my room, so I should be able to check email more often, no DSL available here though, so likely no skype! I will say I am very excited our satellite feeds both BBC World and Bloomberg, so I am keeping myself pretty caught up on current events around the world.
Just over three months down, I am officially a volunteer, if you have not received my video of swearing in, let me know and I can forward it out!
Seems like I just left still,
La revedere,
drew