It's been a long time since I posted, sorry about that. I am still alive and well in Moldova! (Although I do officially have my first case of Giardia. Yay.)
Before I get into the subject of this post please note that I changed
the tabs at the top of my blog and you will now see one that says "Gifts
and Care Packages". In this tab is a list of things that I would like
from the states, IF you want to send me anything. Of course, I do not
expect anything so please don't take this as "you must send me
something." I also added a button if you would rather just donate to my traveling fund :) (yay! traveling!).
Soroca
Last week the volunteers that work in schools had our first school vacation, here it is called fall break. The students get a full week off of school and the teachers, well, don't. Most of the PCVs thought that we would have the entire week off but that didn't really happen for any of us. I went to school Monday through Wednesday and, to be completely honest, it was awful. I sat through meetings with the other teachers and tried to understand what was happening but 95% of what was said went straight over my head and the other 5% had no baring on me at all. The teachers used this week to catch up on grading and other administrative tasks while my director and adjunct directors were running around with a light sheen of nervous-stress sweat all week. I felt utterly in the way. My partners were also so busy with their full schedules that we did not have much time to plan so instead of the four lesson plans I wanted to get completely done we barely finished one. This is not a huge deal because we've been planning week to week since school started but it would have been nice to be ahead. This week I realized that the only part of my job that I enjoy is the kids and without them in the school I think I would be miserable for the next two years. There is something so wonderful about walking into your job and having thirty smiling faces greet you in every single class. These are the 3rd grade smiles I get to interact with every week:
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| Note the wall hanging of Mihai Eminescu, the poet, in the background. |
Fortunately, I did end up getting some time off during the fall break and on Friday I took a minibus north 3 hours to hang out with my friend Kaylee. Kaylee lives in a village called Frumuşica which translates to "little pretty", when we found out where she was going for her permanent site we asked our language teachers if calling someone frumusica is an insult like saying, "Yeah, she's ok. I mean, she's a little pretty." Haha.
Anyway, my visit to Little Pretty was the first time I felt like I was actually in Peace Corps. There is something about walking through streets of mud (there is one paved street in Frumusica), in the dark and fog, listening to chickens, ducks, dogs and the clop clop cloping of horse drawn carts that drives home that thought of "I'm not in the US anymore." It was a wonderful feeling, exhilarating and clean, a fresh start.
We only spent one night in Frumusica in which we filled Kaylee's host family's kitchen full of smoke making chicken and eggplant parmesan. Aside from the smoke I think the dinner turned out pretty delicious. Saturday we got on another bus and headed to the town of Soroca, where we met up with other PCVs. Soroca is located on the Northern border of Moldova and is separated from Ukraine by the Nistru river which runs the length of Moldova and creates the border between Moldova proper and the break-away territory of Transnistria (for more information on Transnistria - which is facinating - click here).
Soroca is an interesting town for three main reasons. One, it has a massive population of Roma (Gypsy - the old term that is now considered derogatory) and is, in fact, called the Roma capital of Moldova. Roma people are an ethnic minority in Moldova and have a very rich history, however, we did not have time to explore this aspect of Soroca.
Two, Soroca is really old. It was established in the medieval period and in 1499 Stefan cel Mare (see my post on culture for a bit of info about him) built a fortress in Soroca that was a major military stronghold through many wars until 1735 when it was finally conquered by the Russians during the Russo-Turkish War.
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| The entrance to the fortress |
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| Inside, there are three floors that visitors can tour. |
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| Stefan cel Mare si Sfant (Stefan the Great and Holy) |
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| Soroca from the top level of the fortress |
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| Ukraine and the Nistru river viewed from the 2nd level of the fortress |
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| This is very Moldova - no bathroom, no smoking and no sunflower seeds allowed on the premises. Sunflower seeds are eaten a lot here and there are shells everywhere. |
Third, just outside of Soroca is a the tallest structure in Moldova, of course, it's the tallest structure because it was built on a hill, but it's still really cool. It is called the
Lumânarea Recunoştinţei or Thanksgiving Candle and is a tribute to the anonymous heroes who devoted their lives to preserving the language, culture and history of Moldova. The structure itself looks like a giant candle and inside is a small chapel. After climbing the 657 stairs to the structure (I'm not exaggerating here) we were told by the security guard that there was also a monastery that had been near the site of the monument. People from all over the world come to the monument to buy candles from the chapel and visit the site of the old monastery to say a prayer, light a candle and heal their illnesses. It was beautiful.
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| The Lumanarea seen from the Nistru river. |
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| On step 550-something |
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| From the "deck" of the Lumanarea. The river curves around Ukraine. |
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Happy November everyone, stay warm!
