Homeward Bound

And so ends the time of my being in Moldova. Six weeks that sometimes went by very fast, and sometimes didn't. But all worth it in the end. Having experienced another culture, met new people from all over the world, worked with children in orphanages and child centers, and seeing sights that some people never see in their lifetime, I am now ready to go home.

Chernobyl and Pripyat

More Pictures to be added soon.

"The discovery of nuclear reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than the discovery of matches."

-Albert Einstein

On the night of the 13 of August, I took off from Chisinau solo with a mission to see the infamous site of the Vladimir Illych Lenin Nuclear Power Plant, better known as Chernobyl, and the famous ghost town of Pripyat, Ukraine. This was a trip that I set up and planned myself, so no other Projects Abroad people were going. Some of them asked me if I was scared or nervous about traveling alone, to be honest I was more than excited to be able to get out and see one of the most eerie sites I can think of. Four weeks ago during the Projects Abroad trip to Kiev I found a tour group that took visitors to visit the site of Chernobyl and Pripyat. There was too short of notice that weekend to catch a ride on a trip and since then I was unsure of the ability to be able to go at all. But this weekend being my last here in Moldova (I fly out next Saturday) I decided to delve further and see what options were still available to me. Ultimately, it included some emails back and forth with the tour group manager to discus certain logistical issues, my buying a bus ticket to Kiev, and then just being at the right place at the right time.

Friday the 13^th was our director Igor’s birthday and we all met at a large Andy’s Pizza to celebrate. We had some great pizza, got to see everybody that was in Moldova with Projects Abroad at the time, say goodbye to the young British girls and French after their two weeks spent here, and to Vicky, last of those whom welcomed me with open arms that first night of mine in Moldova at the World Cup final game. A great time was had by all, but the time came when I needed to return home to gather my things for my 7:00pm bus ride to Kiev. I was planning far too conservatively with time (thanks mom and dad) and so I had a lot of time to spare at home and at the bus station once I arrived. Better to be early than late, but there’s got to be a limit. After a couple of hours waiting, our bus boarded, my ticket was checked, border papers filled out and I knew that I was at least safely Kiev-bound.

The bus ride was typical. An hour and a half combined at the Ukrainian and Transdniestr borders, but this time I was able to see everything in the daylight. Ukraine eventually gets pretty flat, but the drive out of Moldova was one of the most beautiful drives I’ve taken and by far the most beautiful I have seen in the last five weeks. The hills surrounding meadows, pockets of small houses here and there and a great deal of spacious land in between it all made for a very enjoyable ride out. Then there was the ten hours until arriving in Kiev just after 5:00am. The meeting was to be outside the Kazinskii Hotel on Independence square at 8:45am, I had more than enough time so I meandered around the city some more. All to places I’ve already seen and been, but this being my second time in Kiev, I took in as much as I could. After some small, cheap breakfasts in McDonalds and reading next to the fountains I met with the group going to Chernobyl.

They say that group sizes are usually between twelve and fifteen people. Our group had forty-two. If I was trying to stay away from large groups by going solo, I failed. However it was an English speaking tour and I could talk with everybody. There were Irish, British, Canadian, a few other Americans whom I never met, Germans and Ukrainians. Despite the large size, it was actually a good group to be with. After everyone had paid and been checked in, we boarded our charter bus and headed up to the town of Chernobyl, about ten kilometers from the power plant and twenty kilometers inside the 30km Exclusion Zone. Two exclusion zones surround the power plant, 30km and 10km. During the accident more than 100,000 people were evacuated from the whole area and were forbidden to return, however because completely restarting their lives was impossible, some people chose illegally to return to their homes and villages. Today there are approximately three hundred people living within the 30km zone. We crossed through the border of the 30km zone and arrived at Chernobyl after a little more than an hour and a half drive. There was a very interesting video playing about the accident on the bus, but since I got little sleep on the bus from Chisinau to Kiev I was fighting to stay awake the whole way up, but once there I was as alert as could be.

We met our guide, Max, and he gave us the rundown on the people living there, what we will do that day and see, some details about the accident and a few jokes, which turned into very many jokes later in the day. I guess if you live and work around Chernobyl you have to have a certain kind of sense of humor. All of the workers in Chernobyl live elsewhere and are on one of two shifts: a fifteen day on fifteen day off shift, or a four day on four day off shift. Tourism has jumped in the last few years since the two computer games Stalker, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (more so COD 4, I don’t think people are actually aware the game Stalker exists, it sucks) were released because of the presence of Pripyat in the games and Forbes Magazine selected Chernobyl and Pripyat as one of the most exotic tourist places. Some of the tourists purchased the radiation meters and after signing a paper that says we’ll all follow the rules, we were off to finally begin seeing the area.

Our first stop was a former stadium which was turned into an open air museum. There were a few tanks and trucks sitting inside surrounded by radioactive signs(Max insisted we could walk anywhere and around them all). Max used one of the meters to show us that the treads of the tanks were still fairly radioactive since they had the most contact with the ground, and after a few pictures we went to the Chernobyl Fire Station. Outside this station is a monument dedicated to the firefighters who immediately responded to the fire at the plant. Having no knowledge of the radiation leak, they were immensely unprepared for what they were facing and all lost their lives within a few days of exposure. The monument erected outside the station was paid for completely by the friends and families of the firefighters, no state funds went into the monument. Then we drove to the plant.

On the way to the plant, we drove through the town of Kopchi, or rather what used to be the town of Kopchi. More than 1,000 people lived in this town inside the 10km zone, but after the accident bulldozers and tanks completely cleared the area of all buildings and had them buried in the ground with cement. The outlines of foundations are all that remains of this town.

Upon getting closer to the plant, we stopped several times. The first stop was on the road where you could easily see reactors five and six which were under construction when the accident happened. They were abandoned and the cranes being used to build the reactors lay in stasis, half up and appearing in mid-use. Two large cooling towers were also abandoned, one almost completed and one half way built. The plan was for twelve reactors total, but none were pursued after the accident in 1986, though the last reactor, number three, wasn’t shut off until around 2000 amid international pressure, even though experts agreed the reactor was safe and incredibly beneficial for Ukrainian energy. At this time there are still nearly 4,000 people that still work at the Chernobyl power plant. Across the street from what would have been reactors five and six stand what is known as Ukraine’s most expensive monument. A 30 million euro nuclear containment facility which was supposed to be responsible for holding the nuclear fuel that is still stored in reactors one, two and three. Unfortunately the designers (the French) made a ‘slight’ measuring mistake. The storage spaces are too small to hold the nuclear rods; kind of ironic when nearly 90% of French energy comes from nuclear power.

We rounded the corner for another photo opportunity, all four reactors in one picture. Reactors one through four can be seen across the horizon, four covered in its steel sarcophagus. Upon entering the facility, we were forbidden to take any photographs except for two places: the catfish under the bridge and the steel sarcophagus. No pictures of the perimeter, other facility buildings, guard houses or anything. I wish I could describe these catfish in full detail, and while I took many pictures of them I don’t believe any picture portrays the shear enormity of these fish. Without exaggerations I’ll say easily five feet long with heads as large as basketballs. These things were as big as deepwater tuna. Finally we arrived at our destination, about 300 meters from the wall of the steel sarcophagus (which isn’t very good and has many holes in it). The radiation levels weren’t close to dangerous, but we were standing in the same places where so many workers were exposed to beyond toxic levels of radiation just twenty four years earlier. We took our pictures, soaked up the surrealism, and boarded the bus for the most eerie place I may have ever been.

The city of Pripyat, Ukraine used to be home to more than 50,000 people. It was the center of all things great for the Chernobyl Oblast. The prices were cheap and you could buy anything imaginable (at least for the Soviet Times). The apartments buildings were newer and very well taken care of and the streets were lined with rose bushes and neatly trimmed trees and bushes. When we entered the gate and began driving down “Main Street” it seemed more like a forest. After almost a minute of driving through this unrecognizable manmade expanse, buildings finally became visible behind the trees. We pulled over at the city center. It was just as has always been described, an overgrown ghost town.

There was rubble and debris everywhere. Windows blown out, fallen ceiling panels, concrete chunks having broken away from their buildings; the place was completely falling apart. We climbed the eight stories or so of the Polisia Hotel to the top floor where we could really see the magnitude of how overgrown the city was. The insides had been looted, so there wasn’t much left in terms of hotel remedies (no room service), but after walking around all the floors by myself and finding my way into rooms here and there, the place was actually becoming a little scary. These weren’t ancient Greek or Roman ruins where people lived thousands of years ago. People lived here less than twenty years ago and many of them are still alive today.

After the hotel, we saw the library, where books were tossed all over the floor. Ironically there was a book with a page opened to Lenin’s face and name…coincidence?(I stepped on it) We then saw the gymnasium, boxing ring, pool, and finally went outside to see the fairground. The famed Ferris Wheel stood in the rear of the park and everybody immediately was drawn to it, however Max had to keep coaxing people away from one of the other rides. Apparently it was still very radioactive, as was a pile of moss on the ground on the other side of the park. Still nothing to worry about, but you wouldn’t want to lick it, or stand around it for more than an hour. After the amusement park, we started to head back to the bus to return to Chernobyl. On the way out we drove over the ‘Bridge of Death’. This is a bridge which is high enough to see the power plant and where many inhabitants of Pripyat watched the fire happen at the plant, despite many announcements that “nothing had happened”. All of the people who were on that bridge died days later from radiation poisoning. The town of Pripyat was evacuated in only a few hours after the announcement came (which was thirty-six hours after the explosion happened). They were told to bring only enough for three days before being able to return to their homes and to leave all domestic animals in the city. More than 1,500 busses took 50,000+ people out of Pripyat, this was the last time they ever saw their homes.

An experience I will never forget. After the tour, back in Kiev some of us had drinks and discussed the trip and happenings of the disaster. One of the men on the trip was a University student from London and doing his doctoral thesis on tourism at Chernobyl. He wanted to recorded and hear what we had to say. It was only five of us, but it was a good discussion to capture the events of the day and really discuss the event from different perspectives; a German, two South Africans, a Ukrainian and myself with the London student.

Odessa

This past weekend, seventeen of us volunteers went to visit Odessa. Four new French volunteers who spoke very little English or Russian (three adults and one son), many new British high school girls, two Dutch, and two Americans all of college age. The trip was pretty full. We left Chisinau at about 10:00pm on Friday night and drove through the night, spending nearly an hour at the border of Ukraine. After almost seven hours of driving, we finally pulled up to our parking spot at the beach of the Black Sea. Nobody got a good amount of sleep on the bus, but everybody was glad to be out of the bus and on the beach. So much so that almost everybody spent the first hour on the beach asleep. Though it may have been very early (5:00am), we were all able to get beach chairs and sit at the very foot of the water, a luxury most of the visitors who came later in the morning were unable to relish.

We spent six and a half hours there before finally deciding it was getting too hot. But even for leaving before noon, that is plenty of time to spend on the beach. We swam, we read, we slept, we swam some more, and we all got a lot of sun. So the hotel didn't sound like such a bad idea. We stayed at the hotel 'Passage' in the center of Odessa and had an hour and a half to shower and relax before lunch, which we were all looking forward to because of the lack of breakfast that morning. It was also at a cafeteria-type cafe where we were able to stack as much food as we could on our plate at pretty cheap prices. The second great sign of Odessa after the beech. After lunch, the general consensus was to go back to the hotel and relax until our excursions at five, but the two Dutch and myself found ourselves walking around the city instead of spending our only afternoon in Odessa asleep in the hotel.

Finally, around five o'clock, we all met for an excursion to the port and a boat tour. We passed the Odessa Opera House and the Potemkin Staircase on our way to the port, but having already taken a boat tour in Kiev, the two Dutch and I decided to forgo the watery road and look around the city some more. It was a great decision because I was able to go back up the staircase and get my picture taken with a beautiful crocodile. Afterwards was a delicious dinner at a pizza place called 'Zara' where we spent nearly three enjoyable hours. I ran into some other Americans as we were leaving, some older gentlemen (very drunk) from Alabama and Connecticut. They didn't have much to say other than hello and that I need to go to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland (since I told them I was from Ohio). And after that we headed back to the hotel.

The next morning consisted of buying snacks for the ride back, which started at 12:00pm this time, and buying some souvenirs at the market. It was a short trip, but I loved Odessa. The difference between Kiev and Odessa reminded me a great deal of the differences between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Odessa has older, palace-like buildings still lining its streets and is much smaller and seemingly friendlier than Kiev. The atmosphere was great and I will definitely plan on revisiting Odessa in the future.

It Continues

I’ve been seeing and hanging out with more native people from here in Moldova. It seems there is a common trend. Moldova is divided, pro-Russian and anti-Russian. The anti-Russian’s are angry at the Soviet’s because when borders were drawn, Moldova lost it’s highest mountains in the north and its coast lines in the south to Ukraine. The pro-Russians still believe that Moldova was in better shape and had less corruption in the government during the Soviet Union and have much nostalgia for those times. However with the recent political turmoil in April, the communist party has seem to have lost footing. One Moldovan even wished that the Germans would have been able to take over Moldova to avoid the many atrocities caused by the Soviet Union in the actions taken by its leaders, especially during the ‘Starving’ (even though that was prior to World War II). There is not a lot of trust within the government, but there is hope in the minds of the people that as time moves on, things will change for the better.

But the many Moldovan people I have met are wonderfully kind people; always willing to offer information on how to get to a certain trolleybus or another part of town and very patient when trying to buy things when neither parties speak the same language. With my mediocre Russian I have been in a much better situation than many of the other volunteers who know little, if any, Russian or Romanian. But everybody seems to be getting along in the city without any major problems.

Today was a day to celebrate the exodus of the final Canadian volunteer for the time being. Jacqui from Vancouver is leaving tomorrow to return home and find a new job to replace the one she left to come to Moldova. We went from hanging out at an outside bar to getting shish kabobs and trying to eat them on the steps of the parliament building (we got in all our pictures, but finally a guard came out and told us we had to leave). And then spent the rest of the time in the park. It was a good way for her to spend her last night with the people she’s been here with the longest plus two Moldovan guys that they’d met from the many football games during the World Cup. One of them is a border guard and will be working the border when we return from our trip to Odessa this weekend, so we should be able to see him again when we come back to Moldova from Ukraine and he‘s got a great sense of humor, especially when you try to imagine Eastern European border guards. There’s always one more interesting person to meet here.

This week has consisted mostly of Russian lessons with Monday and Tuesday spent at the daycare center. I decided to forgo Wednesday through Friday at the center because there are already four others working there (with only 6-10 children at a given time) and they don’t need my assistance. So I’ve been able to focus on Russian and wandering around the city. I may inquire into switching to the Medical program in my last two weeks here, just to see what the hospital situations are like from my own point of view, but we may be returning to the library orphanage this coming Tuesday and it would be nice to go back to working with those kids. Until then, my trip to Odessa, Ukraine begins tomorrow evening and I am looking very forward to seeing this ancient and intriguing city.

The Halfway Point

It's already been three weeks and three weeks from this moment I will be sitting on a plane [probably reading the same damn book] over the Atlantic. So I guess the time has been going by fast. But there is still plenty to come in the weeks ahead; a trip to Odessa, perhaps Chernobyl and Pripyat, and who knows what else.

The past couple of days have been interesting, to say the least. I have spent a good amount of time wandering the city of Chisinau more and more but always end up sitting in the park and drinking Coke. I've drank more coke here than I have in probably the entirety of last school year. I miss my Pepsi. The excitement began on Wednesday when we convinced Igor, our Project's Abroad director to throw a BBQ in the big park. He happily obliged after some convincing, that everybody would enjoy it. So we ended our day early at the Children's center and went off to the BBQ. But I didn't know that was going to be the last time I would be at that center, because as with just about every other place that houses kids in the city right now, they all went off to their summer camps this weekend. So once again I am moving centers and will be working at a new place. More of a daycare than an orphanage.


We arrived at the park just as the staff and some of the other volunteers were setting up all the food and cooking the delicious chicken. This was like, good KFC grilled chicken. I was a little skeptical at first about the whole BBQ thing in Moldova, but Igor really pulled through. All the other volunteers showed up shortly after us and the party began. It was the first time that most of the volunteers got to see everybody that was there. So that was cool. It was also the last night of two volunteers from Canada, Jason and Hannah. Then some others left/are leaving this weekend. Everybody had a great time at the BBQ, it's a really cool, unique, and diverse group of people. The BBQ lasted nearly two hours and then it finally came time for us all to head back home. Some of us (Just me and Texas(Erin)) wanted to take the two Canadians out that night because they were leaving in the morning, so we went home, changed and then met back in Ciocana (the district where everybody but me lives) and the four of us plus Hannah and Jason's host sister Iana went out to a Billiards place.

They didn't have American pool. We had to play Russian pool, which sucks because I was all excited about playing good ol' fashioned American pool (which definitely comes from America and nowhere else). But Iana taught us how to play Russian pool and we gave it a shot. Hannah and I were on a team against the other three, and we lead the match at the beginning, but after getting two balls in the pockets and stealing two others when they weren't looking, they finally beat us. Which was fine because the game took far too long. Imagine an extra large pool table, but with extra small pockets, Russian pool. Oh and all the balls are the same color. Russians... After billiards, we went across the street to a dance club which was kind of pricey (normal US prices) and all had a shot, except Iana who had a bloody mary at 1200 at night. We danced for a little bit and then went home after about an hour, but on our way home we met Mike. Mike bought a bottle of sprite and vodka and treated us all to shots and we visited and drank them in a bus station. It was good way to end the night but I ended up a little more drunk than I'd wanted to be. Everything went well though and the next morning I felt mostly fine.


Thursday was the day we went to the Cricova wine cellars. 120km of underground tunnels (around 12-14 degrees Celsius too!) and more than a million bottles of wine eighty meters underground. And this is the second largest winery in Moldova, but the nicest. We road around on a little tram that took us down the tunnels and to see all the wine. It was a massive place. They have an area of very old bottles of wine that are in no way still good, but they're all very old and some of them were collections of famous people. One of Hitler's number two people had a collection there that she (our guide) was very excited about (the old German lady in our group was not very excited at all) and the collection of Putin she thought was pretty cool. I see a trend there. The oldest bottle of wine is also there, from 1902 I think. It was very tempting to take one of the bottles and it could have been done, but I refrained. We then saw the tasting rooms, which were very very fancy.
There was a presidential room (Where Putin spent his fiftieth birthday) and some other really fancy rooms, but we were forced to sit at this tiny wooden table in the hallway to taste wine. It was offensive. It was literally like a kids table. The wine was great, but the lady kept pushing us to finish and leave. She wasn't very nice.

Friday I began with visiting the new center I will be working at. It is more of a daycare center than an orphanage. So their parents drop them off and pick them up throughout the day. But they also have computers and televisions, so they don't really need us there. It just seems like more of a babysitting placement. But we spent about three hours there doing Origami that the lady running the place showed us (she's obsessed with origami) and then we left around 1pm. I met up with Texas and we loaded all of our videos to Ridley Scott's competition about "A Day in the Life". So fingers crossed on becoming famous directors. And we all decided to meet around 700pm that night for dinner and hanging out on Erin's last night in Moldova after two months.

Meeting up at the Statue on Stefan Cel Mar is the typical way to meet for all of us Projects Abroad, so that's where we met. There were seven of us originally. We decided to have dinner at Blini, a type of pancake place that has delicious blini. And afterwards we headed to the Carlsberg Tavern to spend the rest of our night celebrating her trip. It was a pretty sweet place. The owner, Roma was 27 and from St. Petersburg. He'd spent a couple years in London and a lot of time in the States, so his bar was set up with that kind of atmosphere, uncommon in Moldova. Irish and English flags, paintings on the walls of the streets of London, old street lamps for lighting; it was cool. After a while some of the girls left and it was just four of us, so he came over and sat with us to talk about everything. We talked about his bar and the different countries and our time in Moldova with Projects Abroad while he started comping all of our drinks and food. It was a really great time and now we all have a great place to go to at night for dinner and drinks.

It has been a great couple of weeks here, but I'm getting ready to go back and start school. I've still got three weeks ahead of me to enjoy and it will be a great three weeks, but I think after that I will be very ready for some Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Milk, Pepsi, and Home.

This Saturday was the Project’s Abroad excursion to the Saharna Monastery, about 120km outside of Chisinau. The Saharna Monastery is known for having monasteries and chapels cut into the sides of cliffs, and for having a spring fed pool of ‘Saint’s Water’. The trip up there took more than an hour, but we made a few stops on the way to take in some of the monuments and scenery during the drive.

Our first stop was a small town to see some monuments to the people who died in Afghanistan during the ten year Soviet war from 1979 to 1989, a monument to those who died as a result of the Chernobyl incident, and then a monument to those who were sent to the gulag camps in Siberia during the Soviet rule of Moldova. With all the McDonalds’ and Addidas stores, new western movies and Coka Cola, I sometimes forget that Moldova suffered a great deal during World War II (by Soviets and Nazis) and afterwards during the Soviet Union. These monuments in the small town, which are rarely seen by visitors, remind the people of their unfortunate history. However we did not dwell on the monuments for long before we needed to board the bus again to continue our ride. The next stop was a World War II tank, raised up on a pedestal along the side of the highway. It was the site of a World War II memorial site, but seemed to have been very unmaintained. A lot of it was overgrown with weeds and grass. Even though the tank was up on a pedestal, we were still able to climb it, and managed to get up on top for some pretty awesome pictures. Everybody likes standing on top of a tank, everybody.
For lunch, we stopped at a pie restaurant. Pies in Europe… I can’t say much about them except that everyone loves them but me. The cheese they use here just isn’t the same/good. So I suffered down a couple pieces of cheese-filled ‘pie’, had my beer and we were off again. This time to the Transdniestr river. Across the river was the pseudo-country Transdniestr. The monastery was on a creek that flowed into the river, so I knew we were close. And finally, when I thought that the ride couldn’t get any longer, we pulled up to the entrance gate to the Saharna Monastery. We were in the hills (kind of like a mini-Smokey Mountains) and I could already see steps and trails leading up the hill to the top where a large cross and small building were overlooking the valley. I was finally in the country.
We started our exploration of the monastery by going up that same hill. It began with steps, but quickly turned into a gravel/rock trail. Igor (our director), Clint (another Volunteer from Australia), and I all took the path less traveled, and climbed up a very steep passage to the top. Everyone else followed the steps around the long way, but showed up just after we did. The view from the top though was extraordinary (at least for where I’d been for the last two weeks). The great Transdniestr river was below us to the East, and the other way were more hills with valleys covered in trees with creeks at the bottom. And directly below was the Monastery. It was a nice time. And we spent a good deal at the top, but it was nearly a hundred degrees so we began descending the other side on our way to the waterfalls that were lurking below.
The way down was much more treacherous though; lots of slippery gravel and uneven rocks made it a slow downhill trek, but I loved it. About halfway down the hill were some caves. They were part of a rock quarry that was used to build most of the monastery and so we went deep into the bowels of the “mountain”. It was dark and about thirty degrees cooler than outside, so we took as long as we could before rejoining everyone and finishing the descent.
At the bottom, we took some dirt paths into the trees, found a creek to follow and after about a mile of densely wooded, shady hiking over rocks and across the creek a few times, we came to the waterfall. It wasn’t very large; in fact it wasn’t very impressive at all. But it was still beautiful, and we could walk around behind it and sit on a rock directly where it fell. It was so hot, I didn’t even bother finding a place to change into my suit, I just went right into the water and soaked up as much as I could. It was cold, but it was very refreshing after being in the hundred degree heat. We took a bunch of pictures and spent a good amount of time there before packing up and taking off again. Following different trails, we headed to a pool of Saint’s Water, where there were many people dunking themselves before a cross and spending a good amount of time praying. We observed for a little bit, tried out some of the water coming from the pipes, which was crystal clear and very cold, and then went on our way again. The next stop on our way back out was the monastery carved into the rock. Unfortunately it was closed, but there was a small icon room open and we all filed through the narrow entrance into the cool, dark room inside the cliff. After that was our trek back to the minibus.

The trip was a very nice change from life in the big, dirty city of Chisinau and I’d been looking forward to getting out and seeing some of the Moldovan countryside, which was just as beautiful as it looked from the air. The ride back was long and tiring. We were all exhausted from being out in the heat all day and so many of us took naps, at least for a little bit. One of the other volunteers, Erin (from Texas) and I were jamming to some music most of the way back before, as the music became calmer, I became sleepier and just passed out for a good while. It was a good day to be out, but when talking with the other volunteers on the return trip I realized I only have three weekends left in Moldova! Four weeks, but I leave on that Saturday, so there’s only three weekends left for me, and if I want to get to Pripyat I’m going to have to begin planning this week.
The best part about Saturday, was that Erin informed me of a competition started by Ridley Scott of people filming on only the 24th of July, a ‘Day in the Life’; of any sort of footage/documentary about the day, so needless to say, she and I recorded a lot of footage during the trip and are planning on submitting it to Ridley Scott. Who else is going to have video of Moldova, waterfalls, monasteries, and the Capital city? We’ve got high hopes for the competition and figure we’ll be big Hollywood stars in a year or two.

So this past week I finally started working at my placement in Chisinau. It should be the final move, but we never know what’s permanent here. I’ll be working at the Center for Childhood Adolescence and Family hanging out with the little kids in the center. They’re anywhere from 7-10; some are older but they don’t like to hang out with the younger kids or the “adult volunteers”. My first day there, I was with two other volunteers and a local Moldovan who works there every day and hosts Projects Abroad volunteers. We started off coloring with two little girls, Marina and Nikoleta. Initially, Marina wanted me to help her color, but she quickly decided that she wanted to color it all and I had to find my own picture to color. We spent a little bit of time inside coloring, but when it got a little cooler, we headed outside to play with Jason’s (one of the volunteers) guitar. He also brought a football (soccer….Europe) and two other boys joined us to play outside.


Between playing guitar and football, the time passed by pretty quickly. Though after not too long, the kids found balloons in Jason’s bag and we decided to play the game where we tied balloons to our ankles and tried to pop everyone else’s balloon. But that didn’t last forever and the kids brought out some old hot wheels cars that I remember having a long time ago. The four hours passed by, it wasn’t slow but time didn’t fly either. I also initially thought I was only to be there until five, so when I discovered I was staying till seven it was a bit of a surprise; but that’s how things work here. So at seven we headed out, caught an extremely packed maxi-taxi and headed back into the city to get home. And you would not believe how packed these things get. If there is any room at all, even the slightest bit of space for a person to fit, they will get in. So it wasn’t a very comfortable ride, and it was nearly an hour. Otherwise the placement I think should really been a good place to be for the next four weeks.

My Russian lessons continue for two hours every day and I can tell I am making progress. It isn’t the most exciting place to be, but it will definitely help when the time comes to go to Dr. Sutcliffe’s Russian 411 class in the fall. He already told me how intense it will be, so now I’ve actually gotten pretty excited about my Russian lessons here, because I’m going to need them very soon.

Weekend in Kiev

Having spent the weekend in Kiev, I can now check off the box of visiting Ukraine. However I will have to return to visit the exclusion zones around Chernobyl and Pripyat. Some other volunteers and I tried to set up a tour of the area but there was too short of a notice in the one weekend. Maybe I will have a chance in the future to visit before heading back home for school.
The weekend began Thursday night with an overnight bus ride to Kiev. The bus left at 9:45pm and arrived around 7:30-8:00 the next morning. Transiting through the Transdniestr region from Moldova into Ukraine took longer than I expected, but it was a smooth transition. They collected our passports, held us for about forty-five minutes to an hour, passed back our passports and let us move on our way. There were no hang-ups on the way, only the long bus ride of which I slept very little. Upon arrival we exited into the bus station to use the restroom and exchange money, since we were given only one stop on the way. It turns out that bus stations in every country are shady. Luckily there was a McDonalds next door with much better restrooms; and of course ice cream. From there we headed into the metro to a monument park, dedicated to the victims of the “Starving”; the incidents during the 1930’s when Stalin ordered all of the food from Ukraine and Moldova shipped to other parts of the Soviet Union (mainly just Russia) resulting in the starvation of millions of people. It was a relaxing park, beautiful view of the river Dnieper and of the city. Afterwards, we visited one of many Orthodox Cathedrals scattered across the city. With cupolas of gold, Kiev has become known as the ‘City of Golden Domes’, and they are beautiful. We saw the inside of one of the churches and witnessed some beautiful, liturgical singing before descending into the crypt. It was very narrow, stone cold, and very medieval. Sarcophaguses were lining the hallways with icons and candles. I couldn’t help but thinking of how exciting it would be to sword fight down those tunnels, but I digest…

Before finally making it to the St. Petersburg Hotel near the center of Kiev, we stopped at a small café for lunch. Borshch, fried chicken, beer, what more could one ask for after being on a bus for nearly twelve hours and carrying around a duffel bag all day. After spending some time relaxing at the hotel, showering and napping, several of us decided to head towards the ‘Old Town’ district and hop on a boat tour up and down the river. It was a slow and relaxing ride allowing us to see much of the city from the riverside. The first day ended with a mediocre meal at the Sepia Pub in Old Town after the boat ride. Then the long walk home and the much needed sleep that night at the hotel.
The second day began with another walk around the city to a large cathedral. It was located down the road and directly across from one of the cathedral’s we’d seen the following night and also had a choir singing beautifully inside. It was a typical Orthodox church filled with beautiful icons and surrounded with candles. From there we headed into a market place on one of the steepest and worst-kept brick roads I’ve ever seen. However there were many souveniours for sale and many of them very affordable (at least much cheaper than Moscow). This street passed the St. Andrew’s Cathedral which was astonishing. It sat on top of a large hill and overlooked the entire city. Its architect was the same architect that had designed the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. After an hour to ourselves shopping and seeing the cathedral, we met in a park at the bottom of the hill and made our way towards a metro and back to the hotel for lunch and to change into bathing suits for the beach. The beach was fantastic. There were sections which we could pay to use (up to 50 Ukrainian bucks for one! Which is roughly seven USD) but we decided to stay in the free area. It was crowded, but everyone was having a good time. There was a crane on the opposite side of the river that had people bungee jumping from and a high bridge which people were jumping off of. I would have loved to have jumped off that bridge, but it looked pretty high. And there was always the risk of getting nailed be jet skiers whom were speeding by about as fast as they could go literally feet away from swimmers. Oh Eastern Europe. After the beach, we grabbed some snacks and hung out at the hotel until it was time to go to sleep.
Sunday was our free day. While unable to go visit the Chernobyl site, we first attempted to find the Ukrainian Military Museum. Well we found the building after some good searching (and passing by it many times) but ultimately it had moved and was located elsewhere on the street. We didn’t want to get lost using the busses to find it so we decided to grab lunch at a pub and visit the central square of the town. Fountains were surrounding the square and even the steps leading up to the central area had water flowing down there, very nice on a hot 90 degree day. We decided to stop by a scary/haunted museum where we learned all about Ukrainian torture devices (in Ukrainian) and then had to go on a haunted trail through this museum. It was short, and mostly funny. But there were plenty of things to jump out and grab you. More exciting than scary. After that we spent the rest of the day in an air conditioned Irish Pub for some Guiness and MTV. The bus ride home consisted of many more stops than the bus ride to Kiev, albeit the same driver, and a much warmer ride. We survived the very long checkpoints on the borders and arrived home around 7:30am. Kiev was an amazing place and I am definitely planning on returning, regardless of whether I travel to Chernobyl and Pripyat or not. But in the future I am looking forward to the many more weekend excursions, including a Moldovan monastery this coming Saturday and Odessa in the future!

Moldova Arrival

I've finally begun my work in Chisinau, Moldova. I arrived on Sunday afternoon round 1205 after a hectic couple of days of traveling. My flights became delayed forcing me to stay a night in New York City, of which Beth Stebner kindly gave me a couch to sleep on in the city after a night of partying in Brooklyn. Needless to say the unplanned night in NYC was not in vain. The next day I flew from Newark to Munich to Chisinau and was greeted by Projects Abroad. They took me to my homestay and helped me get settled into my new home for the next six weeks. And when I finally had the chance to sleep for hours on end, they invited me out, which of course I said yes to. I got to see some of the city, meet some of the other volunteers, who all seem really cool, and the night ended with a bunch of us volunteers and some of the staff uptown watching the final World Cup game on two big screens that were set up with about five thousand other people. I finally arrived home around 1am(great fist night I know) and had to be up early for the official city tour and meeting of the PA staff. I also got to meet two of the other new volunteers that arrived with me. We all were shown the hot spots of town, such as the post office, the park with the free wifi, the MacDonalds, also with free wifi and the PA office. We took some pictures at the office with the Moldovan flag and then met the country director, Igor, for some lunch. Igor is great and helped get me set up with my Russian language lessons, which will be pretty intense for the next two weeks or more. The rest of the day after that was ours. This weekend is a trip to Kiev begining Thursday night! The first weekend I'm in Moldova I get to travel to Kiev, Ukraine. Quite the experience
thus far I would say. Most of the Volunteers are planning on going to Kiev, the city of golden domes, and I know it'll be a great trip.

Leaving for Moldova

Well plans have changed and I will now not be going to Luxembourg, but I will still be spending six weeks in Moldova working with Projects Abroad. The summer has gone by, sometimes quick and sometimes slow, but tomorrow morning I will be taking flight to Eastern Europe. My Saturday will disappear on an international flight, but after meeting my family and spending a day at orientation, I will begin my two weeks of Russian language studies on Tuesday. Packing has been slow and efficient and I am ready and excited to begin my travels. So this will be a short farewell to the US and more will be sure to come in the following days of my arrival. Wish me luck!

Six Months in Europe

This is the first post of a blog that I will be keeping during my travels abroad from July to December. I will be posting about events that happen as well as pictures for all to read and see. For those of you that do not know yet, I will be spending July 10th to August 21st in Chisinau, Moldova volunteering with Projects Abroad, and after a few days in Düsseldorf, Germany I will be studying in Miami's Luxembourg campus in Differdange from the end of August to December.

In Moldova I will spend two weeks working on my Russian language before spending the next four weeks volunteering to assist children from 12-18 that are confined to wheelchairs become more integrated into a society that does not always feel accepting of handicapped children, especially orphans. I will also be responsible for assisting in the teaching of English to the kids and staff working with the project. It will definitely be an eye-opening and humbling experience and I am so excited to experience this very new type of lifestyle.

In Luxembourg I will be studying at the MUDEC, which is the largest US campus in Europe, from August 23rd to December 16th. I will be focusing on the history of Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s through the end of the European Theater during World War II. I will have the opportunity to visit many different historical sites and learn about one of the most powerful tyrants of the 20th century in the same countries he conquered so many years ago. I will miss the states dearly, but am excited to go and will return with many stories and pictures of my six months in Europe.