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!