Report From Moldova

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Samuel Scheurich

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• Report from Moldova; Istanbul
• Report from Moldova; Istanbul
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• IT'S STILL WINTER IN MOLDOVA

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It is Thursday and I am on the cusp of yet another weekend in Moldova. It has actually been a somewhat significant week for two reasons:

One is that, as of Tuesday, every one of the 23rd group of volunteers to enter Moldova has been at our respective sites throughout the country for 90 days (how were my tenses in that sentence?). This may not seem very unusual but it is! Let me explain: We all flew into Chisinau in early June and the 30-ish of us were spread out over three villages near the capital to partake in technical and language training. On August 20th (I believe it was) we were spread out throughout the entire country to serve as health and English teachers.

During the first 90 days at site, none of us (this is a Peace Corps-wide rule) were allowed to spend the night out of our sites. Moldova is a small country and there are a whole bunch of us serving. We are all very excited to be able to travel around and visit our friends. In fact, we have a sort of celebration planned for Saturday in the capital. This is one interesting aspect of serving in a country such as Moldova. Most of us live in villages ranging in population from 3,000 to 15,000.

That being said, we all also live within three or four hours to the capital (most live much closer than this – I live about three hours away). Because of how small the country is, it is easy to do things like meet up on a Saturday to eat food at one of many restaurants throughout Chisinau. I can't imagine that Volunteers in Morocco are afforded this opportunity.

The second piece of news - that I found out about just today - is that the 10th graders will officially be лицей (this the Russian equivalent of 'High School') students today and there will be a ceremony after school. I'll inform everyone what this consists of but I can only assume it will include dancing, singing, speaking and balloons.