Naroc

Good Day!

Lot’s of updates from the Former Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. Here is a list in no particular order of importance. Ruminations perhaps…

1. English Club is a fantastic hit! The children are excited, and I am hoping to start a community clean-up project with them in late July. I teach two sessions per week, two hours per session
2. I am teaching micro-economics at a summer camp for girls at risk of trafficking with an International Aid Organization. www.winrock.org.md The camp will last one week, and I am very excited.
3. I have a five meter long plot of cilantro and a two meters of nothing but jalapeños!
4. My basil plants sprouted last week and are growing rapidly. Both Asian and Italian Varieties
5. I found a store to buy tortilla chips, curry, soi, and chilli sauces, and brie, stilton and parmesan cheese.
6. The weather is not terribly hot right now, this is good because I over packed mini-buses on a regular basis.
7. The Borscht in the summer is basically like Vietnamese fish or vegetable soup. I cannot explain why, but this is a good thing. A break from beets.
8. My Moldovan buddies in my village both left for Moscow for work, I need to find replacements.
9. Moldova is more densely populated than China
10. Summer is not really summer without Lake Geneva, it is more like the Spring is just long and hot and the soon Autumn will come… I am basically just mentally time traveling past the season.
11. The Embassy Fourth of July Party is coming up. It is actually on the 5^th, but I hear it is a blast.
12. The book Standard Deviations (Karl Taro Greenfeld) was probably my best read since I have arrived in Moldova. It is about a young guy financing a backpacking trip through Asia “I give it four bottles of Patron on a scale of 1 to 5, five being on the ground drunk with your eyes looking in different directions” writing as he moves from locale to locale.
13. I have now found 7 English language news channels, and one channel of crime dramas from the States and the UK with Romanian subtitles!

Hope you all are doing well, thanks for reading my blog! Hopefully six months from today I will be home for a visit!

Best,

Andrew