Show Up

There's a saying I have heard more times than I can count: "Showing up is half the battle." I felt that this week for sure. It was my first week in my town, and it's the end of summer. Next week there are two Moldovan national holidays where people get the day off (and the library will be closed), and then school starts on Friday. My partner has also been on vacation this week. Needless to say, it has been pretty slow around the library. Most days this week I found it difficult to muster the energy to go in. But I did it anyway, because you never know what might happen when you just show up.

I spent some time reading through the mountain of papers that I acquired during training. I studied Romanian language. I made Pinterest boards and researched ideas for English Clubs and American holiday celebrations for the American Resource Center (ARC). I tried to speak in my limited Romanian with the staff who were at library. I wrote out a list of questions to discuss with my partner when she returns. I researched Novateca, Diamond Challenge, and Technovation; programs that my library is involved with or might want to be. I found things to do that were useful, but most of them didn't require me to physically be in the library. I was feeling a bit guilty that I wasn't doing anything exceptionally useful yet.

But I reminded myself that it was important for people to see me there and get used to me being there. When people know you are available, they are more likely to feel like they can approach you and involve you in things. A few days ago, a man walked in while I was sitting in the ARC and asked when the English classes would be starting! Yesterday and today, I saw a large group of young people (mostly women) in the library. I was sitting in the ARC today, and two of them walked in and introduced themselves. One was an 11th grade student who had just returned from studying in North Carolina, and the other was a 3rd year law student at the university. They told me the event was a project for them to create a website to provide information about events in town. Very neat! In the programs I will help with, young people will be a primary target demographic, so it was exciting to see that they are already participating in this type of activity. Awhile later, a woman walked in and introduced herself as one of the trainers. We had a great conversation, and another woman came in and they explained to me that the organization that was hosting the event is a local NGO that works with young people. The second woman is a volunteer with the NGO and suggested that we could collaborate in the future. Fantastic!

I'm excited to see that there is interest in participating in clubs and activities at the library and the ARC. I'm excited to talk to my partner next week and get started on deciding what kinds of programs and projects the library will focus on this year. And I'm glad for the reminder that it's important to show up, even if it is challenging and you are not sure whether you will be able to speak to or understand the people you may encounter.

The American Resource Center at my library was a project 

of a previous Peace Corps Volunteer and opened in May. 

Swearing In!

I have lived in my town for a whole week now! Time seems to have both compressed and expanded. It's hard to describe, but somehow days seem both short and long. On one hand, it seems like forever ago that I swore in as a Peace Corps Volunteer and moved to my town, but on the other hand I feel like I haven't done anything here yet and still don't know anyone. Partly that is because I haven't done much yet because my partner has been on vacation. So I have been in limbo a little bit, resting (hurray! I needed it after PST!) and reading all the papers I collected from Peace Corps during training, and just sort of "being" in the library and around town. It has been good; I have a better idea of where things are in my town, and have been able to talk to a few people in shops and things. And I know things will speed up as soon as my partner comes back, the school years starts (in about a week), and clubs and projects get rolling. In the meantime, let me back up a bit to last week when I finally became an official Peace Corps Volunteer!

We were told to have our bags ready to go by 7:30 am, so I did. By around 7:45 am, my mama gazda had to leave for work, but she told me she would come to the Swearing In ceremony for an hour. That was a surprise because she hadn't mentioned it before and I thought she would have to be at work! By 8:00 am I started messaging other trainees in my town to see if anyone else had been picked up yet. No one had. By 8:30, most people had been picked up, but I was still loitering in front of my family's house. Finally at 8:34 am, the rutiera arrived! I was the last to be picked up, and clearly the rutiera was running late because it was racing through Chisinau to get us to the ceremony location in time. We had to be there early to do some preparation (some trainees had to get dressed in traditional Moldovan attire for their dance performance, and some of us had to warm up and practice to sing the national anthem during the ceremony). It turned out that we were there in plenty of time.

The ceremony was really nice. A Moldovan singing group sang the Moldovan national anthem, and then we sang the Star Spangled Banner. Our Country Director spoke, and so did some Moldovan officials. Then the U.S. Ambassador to Moldova spoke and we took our oath. When he announced that we were now Peace Corps Volunteers, a cheer went up from all of us on stage! Then those who had learned the Moldovan dances performed. They did such a great job!! After the ceremony, delicious Moldovan food was provided, and I saw my mama gazda. I'm so glad I got to see her again before I moved away. I really appreciated her hospitality during training. I hope to be able to visit her in the future. She told me she would like that.

When it was all over, each of us gathered our luggage and were taken to our permanent sites. It was so strange splitting up after being with each other for 2 months! I'm thankful that there are 2 other PCVs in my town, especially because we are so far from the capital. Although each day of training felt long, and it seemed like training would never end, I was surprised how quickly it did end. One day I was in language classes, and suddenly we had our Language Proficiency Interview, and then we were sworn in, and now I am a Peace Corps Volunteer! It has been a very long process to get here; I initially applied in April 2016. I'm so thankful to have finally made it to being a PCV and I am excited for what is to come in my town in the next couple of years!

 I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer!!

 singing the national anthem

 Ellen gave a wonderful speech in Romanian on behalf of the M32 cohort

 the dancers performing

the Ambassador swearing us in

 our Country Director and my two language trainers (they taught us so much!)

with our Country Director

my training site team and our language trainers

the dancers! they were fabulous!

 I am so lucky to have these ladies in the same town for the next 2 years!

my first PC Moldova friend, Staging roommate, and flight aisle-mate, Courtney!

(we have friends back in the U.S. who knew each other before we met, too! woah)

 Olorunbunmi, don't know how I would have gotten through training without you!

Rebecca, I am so thankful we were in the same training site!

 Chels, you are wonderful!

Moldovan food!

my host mom at my training site!

One sip at a time

There are lots of things I should write about today (like swearing in as a PCV and moving to my new town!), but instead, because I am feeling tired and because I just read this blog, I am going to write about coffee. I admit I am a bit jealous of that PCV's experience of the coffee culture in Kosovo! Although people in Moldova do drink coffee, it seems like the preference is for tea. When I last lived in Eastern Europe (about a decade ago), I wasn't a coffee drinker. At the time, I did manage to force myself to drink a cup or two of Turkish coffee in Bosnia and Kosovo, but didn't enjoy it at all. Now that I am a coffee drinker, I long for the great access to amazing coffee that I had back in Seattle.

It's funny to realize how impacted I have been throughout my life by coffee culture. Even though I didn't start drinking coffee until I was nearly 30 and in grad school, I've always spent a lot of time around coffee shops and coffee drinkers. Most of my studying and travel planning and job searching has been done in coffee shops, and I definitely miss that kind of culture. I suppose that has been one of the biggest "culture shocks" I have experienced while here. Moldova also doesn't have the same type of coffee shop culture that I experienced in Croatia and the former Yugoslav countries, so that has been interesting, as well.

I was not prepared for the lack of coffee shop culture in Moldova. I sort of expected that I could find coffee shops serving Nescafe like I saw all over Croatia. But I found no coffee shops in my training site. There is a local chain of coffee shops in Chișinău called Tucano, but I live pretty far from Chișinău and even they don't have many coffee options (no mochas or flavored lattes, for example). I did, however, find a LOT of instant packets of coffee in grocery stores. But, after trying several different types of the instant coffee packets for a few weeks, it turns out that I really dislike them and some of them even make me feel sick. During training, I basically gave up on drinking coffee because the instant packets don't seem to be a good option for me, and I didn't want to spend money on coffee at restaurants. 

However, now that I have moved to my permanent site, I'd like to find a way to enjoy a daily cup of coffee again. I've only been here for 2 days, so I haven't investigated much, although I did notice a restaurant in town that had some iced coffee beverages advertised on a sign outside. Again, I am not going to want to buy coffee at restaurants very often, but I'm glad to know that it's at least an option!

I (still) don't know how to make my own coffee, because I haven't been a coffee drinker for very long and I just bought it at coffee shops in Seattle (for many reasons, like lack of time and availability of great coffee shop options). So maybe this is the time to learn. I'm going to start out easy, before I invest in any equipment, so I bought some crystalized Nescafe, a box of milk, and a bar of Milka chocolate at the local grocery store. Once I figure out how to make hot water here at my new house, I'll experiment with making my own mochas. Eventually, I'd like to try making my own chocolate and carmel syrups (and maybe some other varieties), and probably purchase a French press or something if I can figure out how to get ground beans (and if they aren't too expensive - I am a volunteer, after all!).

Here's to coffee adventures in Moldova!

"The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

“Coffee and chocolate—the inventor of mocha should be sainted.” 
- Cherise Sinclair, Hour of the Lion

Portraits of a beautiful cappuccino I found at a restaurant during training:

Update August 28, 2017:

Peace Corps is, most of all, about adapting. Well, it turns out that I can actually enjoy drinking a cup of unsweetened instant coffee with cold, non-foamy milk! Who would have guessed? It's fun to find out new things about yourself. :) Today I got fancy and sprinkled some cinnamon on top. Maybe another day I will experiment with other flavors. 

Deinotherium! (or: Our trip to The National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History in Chișinău)

Last weekend I finally made it to the National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History in Chișinău! It's a wonderful museum, with beautiful collections of national costumes, local animal specimens, fossils, and more. I loved seeing all of it! But if you remember one of my "Fact of the Week" posts, my main priority for this visit was to see the Deinotherium skeleton I had read about on Beth's blog several months ago. It was big! And it was displayed in a lower part of the floor so you could see it at eye-level instead of it towering over you. I haven't seen that type of display in a museum before. It was great to finally see it in real life!

I also enjoyed seeing what types of animals live in Moldova currently. I had read about the pelicans and European wildcat that live in the nature reserve near where I will be living in southern Moldova (more info about the reserve in a future post!), and I'm hoping to at least see some pelicans in the wild. 

As I mentioned, the museum also had many other displays of cultural and local artifacts. We didn't have enough time to see everything, so I am definitely planning to go to the museum again when I have another chance to go to Chișinău. 

sculpture on the first floor of the museum

sculpture on the first floor of the museum

replicas of coins

big map model of Moldova 

(photo is of the area on the map around Chișinău)

The museum building itself is gorgeous, too. The National Museum of Ethnography and Natural History was founded in October 1889, and the current building was constructed in 1903-1905 by architect V. Tsigankov. You can learn more about the museum here. 

windmill outside the museum

front of the museum

front door of the museum

floor tiles inside the front door of the museum

chandelier inside the museum

window inside the museum

the ceiling inside the first floor of the museum

the staircase leading up from the bottom floor of the museum

S'mores!

As training winds down and we realize that we will be moving to places all over the country soon, we wanted to spend some time together enjoying this place we have been calling home for the past 2 months.   And eat s'mores.   Because s'mores.

Moldovan marshmallows toast surprisingly well!!

All 10 of us!