My Village

June 26, 2011 by Mary O 3 Comments

I have officially completed 2 weeks of training!  Six more to go before they let me go off on my own….scary!  So for training all 54 new Peace Corps trainees, they split us up into seven different villages located outside Chisinau, the capital city of Moldova.  My village is Ciorescu, located northeast, about an hour bus ride to the Peace Corps headquarters.  We go to Chisinau once a week, on a very crowded bus that stops at every stop, but it is usually a fun people watching experience.  In my village there are eight other Agribusiness and Rural Development (ARBD) volunteers.  seven males and one other female.  We take language classes together six days a week and are also assigned projects from the ARBD manager.

Last week we had a project to make a local community map (harta).  We all knew the main features of the town, main road, school. market (magazine), bar and soccer (futbol) field.  But to figure out the rest of the town we walked to each persons host (gazda) house/apartment (bloc).  It was a beautiful day, the walk might have been more pleasant had it been 10 degrees cooler, but we all made it through and stopped to get a beer at the end (which is actually made in Chisinau). Here are a few pictures:

Our school where langauge classes are held

Part of the ARBDs

A well, they are all over, most people in our village have their own water source now though

The entrance to my village

And lots of pretty flowers and vegetables gardens (picture of those to come later)

Along with many wells, there are many crosses

A house being built