Crăciun Fericit! C рождеством!

It's Orthodox Christmas today and Moldova has a large community of Orthodox believers, both Romanian and Russian. To be honest, I can't tell you the difference between various branches of Orthodoxy (or whether that is even the correct way to refer to them). I grew up in a Protestant (PCUSA) tradition in the U.S. and didn't encounter Orthodox churches until I visited Serbia in 2006. I did ask some local Moldovans how to tell the difference between Russian and Romanian Orthodox churches here, and they told me you can't really tell the difference just by looking; you'd have to know which patriarchate the church belongs to. I'm not sure if that's correct or not, but I'm interested in learning more about this.

In any case, it's a holiday today here in Moldova, and because the holiday falls on a Sunday we have tomorrow as a day off, too. I admit that I like being able to celebrate two Christmases! I really enjoyed seeing the German/Russian/Kazakh traditions when we celebrated with my friend's family in Germany on December 24, and it was nice to come home to Moldova and still see all the Christmas decorations up and have some time to rest after traveling. My town has a big Christmas tree up next to the university, and lights strung across the main streets. And my host family had put up a Christmas tree in the house and some lights. So pretty!

I'm taking this holiday time to rest, prepare some English lessons, work on some project planning, and in general -- because it is also the beginning of a new year -- think about goals I have for this year. Definitely on my list of New Year's resolutions are good projects and language learning!

First and foremost, I want to get really intentional about learning and practicing Romanian. I had a hard time carving out space for language study toward the end of the year, and then my tutor moved away a few weeks before I went on vacation. So this month I am going to work hard on creating time in my schedule to study, and also make the effort to find myself a new tutor. I've already started asking around! I've also been working a little bit on learning Russian using DuoLingo. Once I get a better foundation in Romanian, I would like to focus a little more on Russian, too. Most people in my town, and many throughout Moldova, are fluent in both Romanian and Russian, so it would be helpful to know some Russian.

Second, I really want the projects I work on with my library to make a positive impact in my community. I've been at site for about 4.5 months now, and the past few weeks have been vacation, but in the new year I'm hoping to finally get some projects going. As PCVs, I think we all have goals of making positive impact in our communities. I'm hoping to be able to do some projects that people here will enjoy and learn from. We have a Peace Corps project design and management conference in a few weeks, and I'm working on some ideas for projects to work on there. It feels good to finally feel settled enough here that I can think about something beyond just trying to understand people or navigate norms and customs. I have reasonable expectations, knowing that no project ever turns out quite as you imagine at the beginning. But I am excited about these projects and think they could be really interesting for participants. Hoping they will come together well! 

Third, I'd really like to make more friends in my community. I definitely know some great people here, but everyone works and has family, and it is difficult to find time to get together. So that's something I want to focus on this year; finding time to connect with local friends, and also getting to know new people here.

As a PCV, it can be hard to set a schedule for yourself, because your time is heavily impacted by your counterpart/organization, your host family, the weather (in the case of hanging laundry to dry!), etc. I am generally a pretty flexible person and don't mind adjusting, but it does make it extra challenging to make sure I have the time I need for language study and lesson/project planning. In the coming year, my main goal is to stay flexible, but somehow manage to schedule the time I need for these important parts of my work here.

La Mulți Ani! Anul Nou Fericit! С Новым годом! Happy New Year! 

The meaning of time

Time and my relationship with time is something I have been thinking about a lot over the past few months. Coming from a culture that is heavily focused on maximizing time, not wasting time, and utterly obsessed with chronological time, it is ingrained in me to try to make sure that I'm not wasting a single second.

In the past few weeks, I spent around 44 hours on busses, a night on a train, lots of time in airports and planes, and even on boats just getting to the places where I needed to be to "do things." At one point, I rode a bus 4 hours one way for a 2 hour event, rode it back home 3 hours, and then did the same thing the next day.

So, all the time spent in transport got me thinking about what it means to use time well or to waste it. I don't have a lot of great insight on this, but I guess it's just interesting to see how perspective can shift. I definitely don't think I would have felt good about doing two successive 7-hour roundtrip bus rides in one day at home. But here, I got to see a beautiful snow-covered landscape, take naps, be in the places I wanted to be for the activities and meetings I wanted to participate in. And while I was in the bus I realized that there wasn't anywhere else I needed to be at the time. Maybe time only feels wasted if there is something else you'd rather have been doing?

More thoughts on this in the future, maybe.

First vacation

I got back from vacation a couple days ago, and two days later than originally planned. It was great, but I am definitely happy to be "home." I'm also happy that Moldova feels like home now. :)

I travelled with 3 other volunteers from my training group. One of them has family in Germany so that was our first stop. The grandparents are ethnically German but grew up in Kazakhstan. Anyway, Christmas with them was great! It was a combination of German and Kazakh, with Russian and German food and language and traditions. Then we went to Venice for a few days, where we had crazy transportation issues. Our flight from there to Budapest was canceled due to snow in London, and the busses were all full, and the train was delayed 1.5 hours, and we slept sitting up/on the floor, etc. It was an adventure, for sure!

Budapest was great! I was really happy to have more time to see things there (when I was there in 2007, we only had 1 day), even though we lost a day to traveling. I'd definitely go there again. We ended with a day in Bucharest because we had to go there to get back to Moldova. Bucharest was another adventure. We hadn't originally planned to spend a day there, but when we arrived on New Year's Eve, we found out that the hostel we had booked had closed 2 months ago! So we scrambled and found an actually really nice hotel for a reasonable price right in the center. The Christmas lights were beautiful, and I'm glad we got to have a day there. I definitely enjoyed it more this time than I did 10 years ago. I'd like to go back and do some more exploring.

I do feel more rested, and it was great to have a chance to step outside my life here in Moldova and reflect. I feel ready now to be back in Moldova and get back to work here. 

6 Months in Moldova!

December 7 was the 6-month mark for M32s here in Moldova. And as I typed that, I realize that that is officially the longest stretch I have been outside the U.S. Previous stints abroad, although collectively totaling multiple years, have never lasted for more than 5 months at a time. As I have said before, there are certainly some things and many people that I miss in the U.S., but I quite like living in Eastern Europe. Lucky for me, because of all the other time I have spent in this region, I already knew I would before I moved here. As the days and months pass and I meet more people, feel more confident about my language skills, and start to get projects going, I feel less stressed and more able to enjoy the experience. The first 6 months have been great, but also SO HARD. I was storing a lot of stress just from living in other people's space and timelines, and wondering what my work would entail, not to mention all the communication challenges. Nothing was individually very stressful, but all together it added up. I've had a cold off and on for a few months, due to not sleeping well, and I attribute that largely to all the small stressors. At the end of this week, I'll go on my first vacation since I arrived in Moldova, and I am ready to take a few days to relax and reflect on my first 6 months of service. I've got some great project ideas that I am excited to start working on when I get back, so I'm looking forward to being able to be fully engaged and energetic to get them started!

The only constant in life is change

I have lived in Cahul for less than 4 months, and already in that time I have seen so much change. Most of the main streets in town have been repaved and crosswalks and parking spaces have been added. New street lights have been installed, flower pots were added in the center of town, and gold shingles have been added to the domes on the church in the park. There are also billboards advertising new apartments that are being built. The stage in the community square is being demolished, presumably so it can be updated. Schools are being remodeled. A new theater building is being built. The piața, or market was renovated and repaved. Not long before I arrived here, the plaza in front of the university was also redone. The rapid changes I have witnessed here remind me of the breakneck pace of change in the hometown I left. As I was preparing to move to Moldova, Seattle had 68 major construction projects going on between SoDo and South Lake Union. It was mind boggling and extremely disorienting to watch my hometown evolve seemingly overnight. Now I find myself in a town that is also changing daily. But my feeling about the constant change is different here. I'm even involved in the planning of a project to do more renovations in town.

So I have been thinking about why I feel so differently about the change I am observing in Cahul. Maybe because it's not my hometown. Maybe because the changes feel like helpful and necessary improvements, rather than change for the sake of change, and money for real estate developers. Maybe because the reason I actually came here is to help enact change, albeit it in a more human capacity-building way than an infrastructural way. Certainly, I appreciate that the infrastructure is improving for those who will live here long after I leave. But it does make me wonder how the locals feel. I definitely understand what it's like for your hometown to feel like it's becoming unrecognizable. Already I have heard a rumor that the reason one of the cafes I liked closed was because the rent was increased. Having experienced it myself, I am very sensitive to the issue of people being priced out of their homes by economic factors. So far, I've heard a lot of good feedback about the improvements around town, but it's definitely something I will be paying attention to over the coming months. It makes me wonder how long the few remaining remnants of the USSR around town (a few monuments and murals) will last.

Stage in the community square being demolished

Gold shingles being added to the church domes

The renovated plaza in front of the university

30th anniversary celebration in the construction site of the new theater building

Unrenovated plaza outside the culture house building

Closeup of crumbling concrete tiles outside culture house

Soviet mural on the outside of the culture house building. 

The mural is dated 1986, only a few years before Moldova left the USSR. 

Let our hearts open wide

I came across this song recently, and the lyrics just so perfectly capture how I think many of us as Peace Corps Volunteers view our time in Moldova. 🇲🇩

We will call this place our home,
the dirt in which our roots may grow
Let the years we're here be kind, be kind
Let our hearts like doors open wide, open wide
Settle our bones like wood over time, over time
Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine
Smaller than dust on the map
lies the greatest thing we have
The dirt in which our roots may grow,
and the right to call it home

- "North" by Sleeping At Last

Bread and salt offered by Peace Corps Moldova staff to welcome M32s to the country.

Wine tasting at Milești Mici winery.

A year ago

1 year ago today, I was invited to serve in the Peace Corps. 5 months ago today I arrived in Moldova. With such concrete anniversaries, it seems important to mark them. It's interesting to note the passage of time and think about what has changed. Peace Corps is definitely one of the most challenging things I've done, but it's a challenge I enjoy. I feel like I'm constantly growing and learning new things, and I love that. And I get to be creative and help make things happen, and I love that, too. There are things - and mostly people - I miss in the U.S., yet I've always loved learning about other cultures, and I really enjoy being immersed in a different culture. I'm not really sure what to say here. I don't want to write something forced just because it's an anniversary. But I will note that my life has drastically changed in the year since I was invited to join Peace Corps, and it has been really hard but definitely worth it. Similarly, in the 5 months since I arrived in Moldova, I have had to learn a new language, adapt to a new culture, learn to live with new people, eat different food than I am used to, try to build relationships with people in my communities, participate in events, create and host events, etc. I sometimes wonder if this place will ever really feel like home in the sense that I won't feel like an outsider. I'm guessing that I will always feel like an outsider to some extent, but I do feel like this town is much more familiar to me now, and that is nice. Reflecting back also makes me want to reflect forward, and I wonder how I will feel when I have been here for a year? Or two years? How will I feel when it's time to move away? As people, we can't help but look both backward and forward. I really appreciate that quote attributed to Socrates, "the unexamined life is not worth living." For me, at least, it's significant because I always want to learn from my experiences and let that shape the direction I go in the future. 

Today, as I was searching through my phone photos for the screen shot of my Peace Corps invitation letter that I took a year ago, I spent probably an hour scrolling through photos from the past 4 years. So many wonderful memories, and also some really terrible ones. Beautiful sights, good friends, delicious food, as well as the loss of a dear mentor, the loss of my job and home, career disappointment, and nostalgia for a hometown that no longer exists as I remember it. Scrolling through more recent photos reminded me of how much has changed, both in my personal life and in the area I called home for so long. Sometimes when I think about all the changes it just makes me miss what is gone. Then again, I have had so many wonderful experiences and made some amazing friends who I would not know if it weren’t for all of the changes. How do I find balance in looking forward and looking back? I'm curious how my experience in Moldova will shape who I become in the future. Only time will tell. For now, though, I'm just trying to appreciate each day as it comes.