The end of August

Today is the last day in August. Here it is a holiday, Limba Noastra, "Our Language" day. In 1989, on this date, Moldovan/Romanian was officially declared the national language. Still, there are lots and lots of people in Moldova who primarily speak Russian. Also, this past Thursday was Moldovan independence day. Its been a five-day week-end. Funny thing though, almost everyday here feels like a week-end. I go to work everyday that I am in the village, which has been most of this month, but the pace of life here is so slow and uneventful that the time moves forward without any real sense of weekday versus weekend.

This past week it was mostly very hot and sunny. Last night we had thundershowers and it has been raining all day today. It is also about 20* cooler than it has been.

For all of my friends who have children starting kindergarten: Melissa with Meredith, Jami with Anna, Alicia with Cam, and Kirsten with Kate, relax and enjoy! All the rest of you starting back to school, or sending kids off for their first day this week, enjoy as well! It is a good new beginning! Schools in Moldova start tomorrow, so there is busy-ness here, as well. Happy birthday this week to my mother-in-law! I miss you all. xoxo, Jami

Eighteen months

Today it is eighteen months since we first met as a group in Philadelphia to begin this Peace Corps journey. There were 29 of us in our group, now there are 22. Two volunteers left for medical care, and the other five for personal reasons. Those of us who remain are probably here until the end, although unforeseen circumstances could change that in a minute for anyone of us. It feels sort of amazing to have made it this far, and the countdown to the end is in sight.

In the meantime, there is the trip home in November. Planning is going well. I have given Natalia the task of contacting the German embassy to find information about transit visas. It was sort of a cop-out on my part, as the information on the German Embassy page was in German and Romanian. I figured she would be able to get the most accurate information from them. From what she shared after speaking with them is that it is a pretty simple and relatively cheap thing to get now that she has her visa for America. She needs to show up at the Embassy with all of her documents, including her American visa, proof of purchase of round-trip tickets, pay the nominal fee, and then we really will be good to go. I will be purchasing the Chisinau to Frankfort tickets early in October, and then we will get the transit visa. We are moving along. In researching all the options, it really is not only easier, but also probably cheaper to fly in and out of Chisinau. If we take a bus to Bucharest, or from Romania through eastern Europe to Germany, Natalia will have to secure transit visas, and pay a fee for each of them, for every country that we pass through. Traveling in and out of Chisinau will certainly be easier. So as soon as I get back into Chisinau I will get the tickets and start counting down for November!

Other than that there isn't much new. I haven't been to Chisinau in a while, and I have no plans in the foreseeable future to go there. It is a quiet end of Summer time. Work is good. Crops are being harvested, preserving of fruits and vegetables is going full force all over the village, kids are getting ready to go back to school. Life is good. Happy birthday today to my nephew, Ahren. I miss you all. xoxo, Jami

Halfway home

Back in June I found a really great price on tickets from Frankfort to Boston. I bought them when I found them, hoping that everything would work out, and so far it has. Natalia has her visa, and plans are shaping up nicely for our activities. Now I just have to figure out how to get us to Frankfort. This is not as easy as it sounds, at least for Natalia. On the day we are planning to leave, there is no direct flight from Chisinau to Frankfort. We can fly the day before, and be in Frankfort overnight. She will need a German transit visa to do that, and she might need one in every instance, as we clear customs before we get on the Lufthansa flight to Boston. We can fly from Odessa through Istanbul, but this is an expensive and long way to get there. Equally long, but much cheaper, is to take a bus, or maybe a flight out of Bucharest. The problem might be in getting the transit visa through Romania, and again in Frankfort. It is a challenging process for Moldovans to get visas into Romania, as it is now in the EU and the gateway to other European countries. I am working on it, and its sort of fun to try to figure out what to do next to get us across the continent. I know from when I flew home before that it costs as much to fly from Chisinau to Frankfort as it does to fly from Frankfort to the US. Crazy!

Other than the field trip planning activities, I am enjoying these last few weeks of Summer. The weather has been warm and sunny, the grapes are ripening, work is good and fun, and I am settled into village life. I am content, but still counting down the days to November 12. I miss you all! xoxo, Jami

Good news!

The good news is that Natalia's visa to visit the United States with me has been approved! Since writing last Sunday, I spent last week working at the Center. On Friday, I was scheduled to go into Chisinau for a meeting for the mentors. The new trainees officially became volunteers on Saturday morning. That is an exciting time for them, and they have now moved to their sites where they will live for the next two years. Sunday I stayed in Chisinau, as Natalia and I were scheduled to go to the US Embassy on Monday morning. We met at the Peace Corps office and went to the Embassy together, but I was not permitted to join her for the interview. I was nervous about how it would go, but yesterday afternoon she picked up her passport and the visa was approved! Now I feel like I can begin planning in earnest. We are scheduled to come into Boston on 11/12...90 days from today! I can hardly wait.

There isn't too much else going on. I have one more trip into the capitol this Saturday, and then I think I will be in the village for the rest of the month. There is a lot of work to do here this time of year. My work at the Center is fairly consistent, but there is much more to help with around the house...grapes and tomatoes to pick, pickles to make, all sorts of work.

Happy birthday this week to my friend, Bob, and my nephew Dustin. The summer is going past quickly, enjoy it! I love and miss you all. xoxo, Jami

Election results

Well, I have to start by saying that I am a little frustrated right now with my computer. I just updated to Explorer version 9, and for some reason I am no longer able to cut and paste from other sources into this blog. I am sure it is probably just some setting that needs to be readjusted, or this blog added to something so that I can paste into it, but in any event, it makes it a little more complicated to put stuff in here from other sources. I always cite the original source, except once with a picture, but until I figure this out, you will only be reading what I am writing. The reason this is so annoying right now, is because this whole election thing is sort of confusing. Added to that, I am really trying not to get involved, or even care a whole lot about the outcome, although I do care greatly about the process.

The elections were held this past Wednesday, July 29. The election was well supervised and there were no riots or problems during or after the voting. There are still some alliances that will need to be formulated to elect a President and the Speaker of Parliament. The important thing to remember is that this time things were done without rioting, without loss of life, and hopefully this country can move forward in peace. I think I have taken for granted the smooth transition of power, more or less, with the exception of the election in 2000, and the confusion in Florida at that time. Still and all, we do seem to manage to move forward more quickly, and with more consistency than has been the process here this year.

Other than the election, the only other thing going on besides work, and my usual daily routine, is working on getting my partner to the US for our visit in November. We have completed her visa application, and are scheduled for an interview at the Embassy next week. It is a lot of little detail stuff, and a fair amount of big bureaucracy stuff, but we are wading through it okay. I anticipate that we will know about the visa by mid-week next week.

Work has been fun this summer. I really am enjoying my time with the residents so much. Everyday that I am here in the village I go to work, usually for about 4-6 hours every morning. Right now there is a young teenage mother and her infant girl staying there, along with two little boys who have been there since January, and three little girls. There are also 2 elderly women, and a middle aged man who is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. He is also a stroke victim. During the day there are also a few, anywhere from 2-6, other kids who come between 9-4 or 10-4. It's busy, and lots of fun. I am glad to at least have enough communication skills to be able to talk to a kid! As I have said before, I can get everything I need, even if I don't always get exactly what I want.

Other than that, there isn't too much that is new. The days are getting shorter, and I am trying not to think about the coming winter, except in terms of my visit home. Its what keeps me going. I miss you all. xoxo, Jami