Integration into a new community and a new life.

August 9^th - Less than two weeks on site and we have to return to Chișinău to complete our residency paperwork at the immigration office.  The 2 hour trip means that we will lose an entire day, frustrating because we are scheduled to return to Chișinău on the 15th for the Peace Corps Moldova 20 year celebration and volunteer swearing-in ceremony.  We discovered that if we miss the 2 o’clock bus to our town from Chișinău we are in for a 40 minute walk into our town from where other rutieras drop us off.

August 11^th – Our host family took us to the city (population approximately 140,000) of Balți on Sunday afternoon where we wandered around the large open air market area eventually stopping for a refreshing beverage.  On the way home Lilia pointed out a street corner where there were 30 or 40 people gathered and told us that it was where we could catch a maxi-taxi back to our town.  We wondered why anyone would choose to ride with 7 or 8 people crammed into a taxi.  Boy was our education just beginning!

August 12th & 13th – Frustrating couple of days at the office for both of us.  Although my partner had driven us out to a farm and an orchard and introduced us to the farmers, we could barely understand what they were saying we were becoming rather bored at our respective offices.

August 14th & 15th – Traveled by rutiera to Ciorescu to see our host mother from PST (training) before the ceremony on the following day.  We brought a chicken as a gift for here but when we arrived she was asleep so we sat outside chatting for awhile.  Iulia woke later and immediately prepared a lunch of battered and fried fish and salad made fresh from the garden.  Later that evening the entire family came over and we found that Iulia had cooked the damned chicken for our dinner!

The next day we took a combination of autobus, trolleybus and rutiera to the ceremony and back to the bus station or autogara.  We were so proud of ourselves that we had navigated the confusing Chișinău public transportation system successfully for the first time. 

Back in our town we found that our partners hadn’t missed us and there was very little for us to do except to wander about and explore the place where we would be living for two years.  We were excited for the weekend because on Sunday we would travel on our own to Balți for a session with our new and highly recommended Romanian grammar tutor.  We were also informed that for the next two weeks Lilia (and I’m not sure but maybe Andrei) would be observing “post” for the next two weeks.  We were not looking forward to the vegan diet this would mean for us.

We were lucky on Sunday to catch a passing rutiera going to Balți.  Later we learned that it is uncommon for rutieras to pass through our town, especially on Sunday morning.  On the trip home however, we couldn’t find an autobus scheduled to leave for our town in less than 3 hours so we wandered over to the street corner that Lilia had pointed out to us the previous week and amazingly enough there were a couple of maxi-taxis waiting for a few more passengers before leaving for our town.  The trip was quick and cheap.  What a convenient alternative!  We were starting to believe we were figuring things out.

The rest of the month passed with increasing frustrations in the office for both of us.  We both hated that our lack of language skills kept us from communicating with our partners and that there was very little for us to do except study the language.  We did get to know our town a little better and had found where the 4 small cafes were located along with the important small shops where we could purchase what we needed.  We felt fortunate that we could find most of what we needed in our town.

In Moldova, August 27 is Independence Day and the 31^st is “Language Day”.  This year there would be a four day weekend starting on the 24^th and Saturday was spent cleaning the house.  It is only August but we could feel fall coming.  On Sunday we traveled to Orhei Vechi to see the second day of the “Gustar” music festival (think Country Thunder on a small scale).

On Monday the 27^th, a holiday, it was pouring rain as we caught an autobus to Balți to see our tutor Nadejda.  We discovered that the autobus was very crowded, took 20 minutes longer to make the trip because it seemed to stop every few hundred yards and cost more that the rutieras charge.  It was determined that from now on we would catch rutieras.  It turns out that wasn’t exactly a good plan.

Independence Day began with the dedication of a new monument commemorating those who died at Chernobyl, in the war with Transnistra, and in Afghanistan from our town and we attended the two hour ceremony with Andrei and Lilia. 

We spend the rest of the day enjoying the nice but rapidly cooling weather.  Lilia left in the evening to attend a seminar in Ukraine for a week and Andrei was only going to be home sporadically while she was gone so we had some extended time to ourselves for the first time since we had arrived in Moldova. 

The rest of the month was spent trying to communicate with our partners and harder still, to get something, anything, accomplished.  The final day of the month was another typical Moldovan holiday with bands playing and many speeches.  Later, after helping Andrei clean the house a little we went to one of the local cafes to sit outside and enjoy the nice weather.

We had been at our site for one month.  We had explored out town.  We had been introduced to several people including the raion council president and vice presidents and the mayor.  We had discovered a few things about the public transportation system, been frustrated with the inability to communicate or accomplish anything but we felt that we were slowly integrating into our small community.  Although we were being patient we found ourselves wondering about the usefulness of our lives as volunteers in our community.