Second post

Hello everyone! I hope that this finds you all doing well. There are so many different things that I wish I could tell you all about Moldova but I know that no one wants to read a ten page paper so I will try to keep this as short as possible! So many things have happened in the past three weeks and I can’t believe that pretty soon I will have been here for a month. God has blessed me so much here...I've met some incredible people so far and feel that I'm starting to adapt to the culture. Last week was a little hard and I was missing home and wondering a little bit why I'm here. The past week has been so much better and I'm really starting to feel that God has put me here for a reason.

Some of the biggest news in my life here is that my working permit came through for me to stay here for a year. It was a very long process to obtain it involving many steps and a lot of things that I didn’t understand. So many things in Moldova involving the government are long drawn out processes. My second day here I had to go get a round of different medical tests taken in order to prove that I’m not going to bring any diseases into the country if I stay here. I had to get approved by all of these different doctors and some of the tests were really weird. For one test I had to stand inside of this big Russian machine that took up a whole room in order to test my breathing or something like that. It was a little scary. Just a glance at the Moldavian medical system makes me hope and pray that I don’t get sick while I’m here….we are so blessed in America to have good health care and a government that isn’t corrupt.

So even though I have been approved for a year, I'm still not sure how long I will actually be here. I'll be here somewhere between six months to a year. I have been praying about it and I don't feel yet that God has given me an answer . Since I'm still adjusting too I don't want to make a hasty decision....frankly I'm just really bad about making decisions and committing to a year anywhere is hard for me right now. Please keep me in your prayers that I will know what God wants of me.

The other big news in my life right now is that in August I will be taking a ten day trip to Egypt!!! Two of the other Hope interns that are working in Ukraine asked me if I wanted to go with them and its unbelievably cheap to fly there and stay for ten days so I couldn't pass up an offer like that. I definitely didn't think that I would be going anywhere like Egypt when I was here but I'm sure glad that I have the opportunity.

This past weekend I got the chance to go to Southern Moldova with my host family for a big birthday party. We were in a village that is so close to the borders that we could see Ukraine and Romania where we were. Even though in distance it is not extremely far to the village that we were in, with the conditions of the roads it took us around three hours whereas in America the same trip would probably take an hour. Two weekends ago I went to Northern Moldova for a wedding with my host family. It is so incredible how different it is in the city of Chisinau compared to the villages. In Chisinau the city is basically like any other city in America, there are some big differences like everyone is so much poorer and the buildings are much more run down but much of the technology is the same.. There is good transportation and modern conveniences for the most part that I am used to. In the villages however, its like stepping into Fiddler on the Roof. There are farm lands everywhere and a lot of people get around by horse drawn carts. (this is the house where my host family's grandparents live in a little village in Northern Moldova) There also isn't much running water anywhere and definitely no one has flush toilets. Last weekend I was at my host family's grandparents' house right before the wedding and I decided that I wasn't going to find a flush toilet so I might as well get used to the outhouse. The outhouses here are different than ones that I've used in the States...here there is no seat, just a hole in the ground. Anyway when I walked in I must have tripped on something because my white flip flop flew off and was suddenly teetering on the edge of the hole!! I lunged for it and Praise God was able to rescue it before it fell in. I don't even know what I would have done if it had fell in and I can't imagine how embarrassing it would have been to explain to everyone why I wasn't wearing shoes at the wedding.

The weddings here are pretty different than in the US. They are more like a church service than anything. They sing a bunch of songs and a few different people get up to preach and then other people get up to perform songs. The whole time the bride and groom sit in chairs up where the pulpit normally goes and try to look excited and happy even though the sermons are so long. There is also a long series of prayers from the parents of the bride and groom and then the bride and groom themselves. The wedding itself takes about two hours. The reception is also pretty different from what we are used to. The majority of evangelical Christians here are Baptists and there is definitely no dancing at the reception (hmmm they are really more like Nazarenes :)). Instead everyone sits at tables and eats for hours at a time. Just when I thought that the meal was over, something else would be brought out and everyone would start eating again. Throughout this time there was a lot of different people who either sang songs or played instruments. There was also a person who had a microphone who walked around and asked random questions of the guests at the reception and conducted various games with the bride and groom and the other guests. (this picture was taken right out side where the reception was, a stray horse with a cart attached walked right up to the window). It was so hard to sit there for such a long time and not know what was really going on since I couldn't understand the language. I think that if I am invited to any more weddings in the future I will have to decline because they are so long and drawn out! (This picture was at the reception, these are relatives of the family that I'm staying with. Its so hard to get people to smile for pictures here)

The church services that I have been to so far have been pretty close to what I am used to. They are a bit more conservative than American services in some ways in that all of the married women wear scarves on their heads and jewelery is considered worldly. Its weird because the women will wear very stylish dresses and high heels but it is bad to them to wear any jewelery. The services are around two hours long and are similar to American services except that there are more than one preacher that speaks and they don't sing very many songs. There is also a good number of performers who take their turn singing or playing instruments for the congregation. It is not unusual for there to be four or five different performances within a church service. Another strange thing is that weddings are conducted during the Sunday morning church service. It is basically the same as a regular service except that the bride and groom sit on the stage and the message is more geared toward them.

Another interesting experience here so far has been the shopping. Most of the shopping here is at open air markets where pretty much anything can be bought. I went a few weekends ago to a clothing market and was pretty surprised by the selection of clothing. There was even a big section for wedding dresses. It was so weird to be at a market like that and there to be these intricate wedding dresses all outside and girl running around trying on dresses. For the most part, things like clothes and electronics are more expensive to buy here and of lower quality than in the States. The food is much cheaper for mostly everything but there are plenty of things that they don’t have here that I’m used to. Some weird things that can’t be found here: peanut butter, zip lock bags, marshmallows, brown sugar, and very much lettuce (I had some at someone’s house but I can’t find it in the stores). The fresh fruit in the markets definitely make up for it though…right now raspberries, cherries, and of course tomatoes and cucumbers are in season and very cheap. Everyone here eats so many tomatoes and cucumbers together. Almost every meal that I eat involves either of these. I don’t know what happened to me but all of sudden I’m loving so many things that I used to hate like raw tomatoes, mushrooms, and cabbage. I really eat so differently here than I do in the States.

(this is in downtown Chisinau, these people have a stuffed bear and caribou and you can pay to have your picture taken with them. I didn't realize that until after I had taken the picture and the person that I was with told me to stop taking pictures)

My internship has been going great. I really like all of the other employees here and have had a good time getting to know them. On Saturday, my organization held a conference for business training for local entrepreneurs and clients. When they were trying to find a job for me to do for the conference, they asked if I had ever video taped anything. I said yes thinking about some of the weird videos that I made in college with my digital camera (Some of you may remember the classic, “Nemo, the killer bug”). Definitely a bad idea to tell them that because it led to me being in charge of video taping the conference and I haven’t ever worked with a real video camera before. Anyway it turned out to be a fun job and now I get to edit the video to make a clip for our website. When it gets done maybe I’ll send you all the link to our website so you can see a little bit more about what I do here. I have also been working on putting together case studies of different clients that have been helped by the loans here. For this I get to travel to where the clients are and take pictures and do interviews. So far everything that I have been put in charge of has been a lot of fun and I’m really enjoying being here. (this is one of the women that I did a case study on...her business has been helped by microloans)

My Romanian has been coming along slowly....there are so many people here that speak English that it is hard for me to practice a whole lot. Luckily so much of it is similar to Spanish so that makes it easier to learn since I've had some Spanish in the past. Everyone here is so incredible at languages, a lot of people know three or four different languages fluently and can speak other languages to some degree. It makes me feel pretty dumb when people ask me what languages I speak and I have to say only English.

(this is my host family and me in Northern Moldova at their grandparents/parents house)

Well, this has turned out to be just a long as the other entry….if any of you are still reading this, thanks for your perseverance!! Like I said before, let me know how you are doing. Just because I’m in another country doesn’t mean that I don’t want to get email! I really miss you all so much! O zi buna (have a good day)!!!