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.