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Hello everyone! Hope you all are doing well back home. Well, it has been about a month since I wrote anything new for this blog (although it has only been a week since I last posted the previous blog). A lot of stuff has happened in the past month. Let me bring you up to speed.
As you may know, I am currently in training (PST) and am living with a host family and after my training; I will be moving to another site and staying with a different host family for the next two years.
I went to visit my future site a few weeks ago. Most sites in Moldova (and all of PC for that matter) are usually small villages, but my site is actually a regional center, but not a very large one. It has about 15,000 people living in it and s about 1 hour from the capital. I wanted a site that was not a small village so I am very happy. My town has 2 discos and 3 pizza shops and a small supermarket (about the size of a new big gas station). It is not the largest place, but I can get what I need on a regular basis, and the capital is not far away. It is very green and lush. It is situated in a valley of sorts and there are lots of hills everywhere. A big plus is that most of the roads are paved (good for walking in the rainy season so I don’t get too muddy).
My site has had several PCVs (Peace Corps volunteers) before. Very surprisingly, there is another PCV already in my site. Her name is Drea (Andrea) and has been in our site for about 9 months. She is not a TEFL teacher like me; she is working in different programs. I was so happy (as was she) to have a site partner. She showed me all around town and made me feel right at home. Another volunteer (Andy) from our region who lives in a very small village came in to visit Drea while I was there. Drea cooked us a delicious pasta lunch and we went for pizza and beer for dinner. It was awesome!
I met my future partner teacher (of English). Her name is Eofrosina Dragon. (don’t ask me how to pronounce it because I cant. I just call her Doamna (Mrs) Dragon). She is a pleasant older woman in her late 50s/60s. I also met my school director (principle). Surprisingly, he spoke very good English (it is not required for the directors to speak English and most do not) and he lived in the states in Des Moines for several years. The school I will be working in has had several PCVs so they have an idea of how ‘crazy’ we Americans can be…which hopefully will work to my advantage.
The main reason we went for this site visit was so that we could choose our future host families. We were given three choices. Let me run down the options I had:
1 – Beautiful big house with lots of technology, an enormous bedroom with TV, but I didn’t click with the host mom, and she has the brattiest 3 year-old granddaughter whom is at the house at least 3 times a week.
2 – Wonderful family of four with a son in the university in the capital who comes home on the weekends and a daughter in 9 grade. The family is the host uncle & neighbor of Drea’s host family. Both kids speak English very well and the dad understands a lot. The mom doesn’t speak English, but she teaches history at the same school as me. But I was previously informed that they weren’t sure about getting another volunteer (had one a few years ago) because they want to remodel their apartment). Also, the four of them live in a very small two bedroom apartment with an average size living room and tiny kitchen. It would have been uncomfortable to squeeze another person in there, much less if I had people come to visit (the day or long term).
3 – The family I choose is wonderful. I really clicked with the mom and the dad is very pleasant. They hosted a PCV previously and love her to death (think of my parents and Feranda). They have a nice house and a separate ‘casa mica’ (small house) where I will stay. The casa mica has a small living-room/kitchen area with a fridge/freezer but no stove/oven/microwave (but that is totally ok by me). I have my own bathroom with an indoor toilet and shower. On the second floor there is an average size bedroom with a freakin’ fantastic view down the valley. The house is about a 20 minute walk from school (I believe…not 100% sure b/c I have not yet made that walk directly). I am ok with that at the moment, b/c it means that I will be getting a minimum of 40 minutes of exercise a day, and that is about how far my current home if from school.
So, I am very excited to move to my new site in about 2 ½ weeks!!!
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