Wow, It has been a while since I posted. A lot has happened in the life of Ryan. Language is continuing. I’m far from comfortable and fluent but I can at least communicate basic things to intelligent and patient people. I started to write a long narrative of the last two weeks worth of events but realized it was getting pretty long, it wasn’t that interesting, and that no one would read it. I’ll just give you the highlights:

Site Visit

• It was cold and wet most of the time

• The rutiera driver was rewiring the radio while waiting for the departure time. The wiring was scary.

• I tried to talk with an old guy about his time working in Sudan while waiting for the rutiera to leave.

• It was the 570′th birthday of the Chisinau. It seems like a great celebration of dance, exhibits, food, and music. I wish I’d of had more time.

• It is about an hour and a half to my village. The rutiera runs 4 times a day.

• My partner is 26, has a physics degree, teaches physics at the school, is working on a business degree, and is president of my assigned NGO.

• My NGO is pretty small and consists of a couple computers and a really nice copy machine.

• I’m not really sure what the specific objectives of the NGO are. I think I get to codify those as part of my job.

• I’ll be living with the mayor. He has a really nice house complete with a shower (but no curtain *haven’t figured out that Moldavian norm yet) and indoor toilet. He and his wife seem really nice. They have three kids. The two boys are going to a university in Romania and their daughter (10 years old) is going to a boarding school in Romania.

• I’m the first volunteer in the village which I think will be good.

Visiting the South

• The group of us took a large bus to visit some Bulgarian and Gargaouse villages in the south.

• They fed us really good food and treated us to song and dance.

• We crashed a village’s wine festival which was a lot of fun.

• I have pictures in my gallery.

Birthday

• My birthday was the 25′th. I am now a quarter century old.

• I got a lot of E-Mails, Facebook postings, and a couple of E-cards. Thanks!

• My host mom and sister sang to me while dancing in a circle around me and kissing me on the cheek each time they made a lap. That was weird.

• My host mom gave me a pair of slippers and socks. I think she had to work hard to find my size.

• My fellow volunteers and language instructors threw an impromptu party for me.

• My host mom threw a big party and dinner for me in the evening with some friends.

• I got a call from my real mom & dad plus my aunt in Norway

• All in all it was a great day

I’ve uploaded some new photos to my gallery. I need to come up with a blogging strategy. I’m trying to decide if I should continue writing random narratives of my life, if I should select specific stories of things that happen, or if I should start doing post on specific aspects of Moldavian life (transportation, food, culture, etc.) What are you thoughts?

We had our site assignment this morning. They way they communicated our assignments was pretty cool. They drew a big map of moldova on the ground and placed a chair with each assignment in the appropriate location with a label. They drew our names from a hat, read a brief description of our assignment and led us to the appropriate chair. My name was called near the end and I was quite anxious to find out where I would be.

Drum Roll Please>>>>>>>>>

I’m going to be in the raion of Calarasi and the villiage of Valcinet. It is small and has maybe 4500 people. It is an hour and a half from the capital. I don’t have a real good idea about the organization I’m be working with other than they were created in March, 2006. They work to develop the community, organizations, and businesses. It sounds like my first work may be Org Dev which is cool. They have a couple computers and internet!!! They haven’t had a volunteer before.

 Next weekend is my site visit. I get to spend a couple days there, meet and select a host family, and see what is happening. It is a solo trip so it should be a bit of an adventure.

 A contest: Try to find as much info as you can and post it in the comments section. Get creative and maybe I will reward you with a post card.

I was just able to upload some new pictures check them out at http://picasaweb.google.com/elenbaum/PeaceCorpsPreServiceTraining

Things are going well here. I went to church this morning in the capital. It was nice. I got in contact with them through a friend of a friend. I met an American who is working with IVCF. He and his wife were kind enough to translate the service for me. I also got to meet an American just arrived to teach as class on worship at a local Christian college.

After church I checked out the Wine Festival. It was really nice as far as festivals are concerned. There were a couple dozen really nice exibits set up by various wine companies. I also managed to find some really nice pasteries.

Now I’m at the PC office uploading pictures and taking advantage of high speed internet.

I’ve been keeping busy here but am well. I’m just getting over a small cold for which I’m glad. I have been getting an amazing amount of sleep. I go to bed at 9:00 and get up at 7:00. I’ve talked to the other volunteers and they are on about the same schedule. I’m not sure what the cause is. I have a could of theories:

1. The different enviroment, bugs, and injections are causing my body to work harder to stay healthy.

2. The language learning in intense and requires more brain power than I give it credit.

In all reality it is probably a combination of all the above.

My schedule is pretty busy. I spend two days a week with all the other volunteers in my group (group 19, 37 people) in a central location for technical training, heath training, immunizations, and other such things. The other days I have language class in the morning and early afternoon. In the afternoon we either have field trips, self study assignments, or free time. I typically spend the evenings goofing off with my family and studying the language. Such is my life. Busy…

I got a Mobile (Siemens C75 for the phone geeks out there) My number is 69 291976. To call from the states dial: 011.373.69291976. Please keep in mind that i am 7 hours ahead! My evenings or MWF afternoons are typically ood times. I don’t know what the charges from the states are but I have free incoming calls. I would recommend that if you want to reach me you call using Skype or Vonage. I think that should be fairly cheap. It is really expensive for me to call the states. I can use Skype but over dial up the connection isn’t great. You can send me text messages at http://www.voxtext.md/?lang=en #

I have a bunch of pictures to upload once I get a chance. This internet cafe doesn’t have CD ROM drives in the computer and I don’t have my pics on my memory key. I “can’t” upload them via dialup and the Cafe won’t let me plug my laptop in.

Back to Class!

PS Can anybody translate the instructions to activate internet on my phone: http://www.tempo.md/?c=4 :-) I love being a geek!