This week I will be in the Stefan Voda region of Moldova. It is located on the Ukrainean border in the south-east of Moldova. There will be three-day seminar on leadership and community activism. I will be doing a short lesson on public speaking and community problem solving. It should be fun; there will a few volunteers present who I have not seen in months and it will be nice to catch up. AJ just returned from visiting his girlfriend in Niger and others have also been on vacation.

A great poing about this leadership camp is that it is requisite for all participants after the camp to organize a "social marketing campaign" in their respective villages. A large problem in Moldova is citizen apathy. It's nice to see some active kids willing to do something for their communities

Mary and I helped out the local Baimaclia scouts about a month ago. We did a lesson on the importance on water. The scouts' trip felt more like a base effort at army recruitment and propaganda than a camping trip. Every day of the camp we all walked to a nearby army base from lessons on history how to disassemble and reassemble weapons, as you can see by the picture.

This is my last year in Peace Corps. My tentative COS (Close-of-Service) date is October 19th. It's been.....interesting. How does one describe living two years of their life abroad in a completely foreign country. Interesting does not really cover it. As trite as it sounds, it really has been "the toughest job you'll ever love."

Until this past February, I was working at an NGO financed by DFID (the Deparment for International Development) from the UK. Its approach to rural development was broad but mainly focused on the social sphere and the agricultural sphere. Despite being an agricultural volunteer, most of my time was spent working with the social sphere coordinator. We organized seminars in my village and others about how to develop to community strategic plans along with writing grants, and business plans.

Since the closure of my office, I have stayed busy with various projects, the latest being a two-week long fitness/health camp with kids entering the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. My site-mate and I organized it and won a small grant from the US Embassy to fund it. The camp was only three hours long, from nine to 12. But believe me, three hours was more than sufficient. Are all children so difficult or is it only Moldovan kids? Let me clarify: Moldovan boys. The camp was broken down as so: morning warm-ups/stretching; a lesson related to fitness/health; water and snack break; depending on the day, President's Fitness Challenges; and then fun games and sports. These boys, or maimuţe (monkeys), as I called them would fight, not pay attention and just argue and argue and argue. The girls on the other hand were paragons of well-behaved children. All in all, it was fun and the kids really enjoyed it. I had a good time was well, plus it was good for my Romanian. I learned a lot of new words and phrases.




Peace Corps has alotted me a great deal of free time. Sometimes I take this time for deep reflection. Most of the other times I read or explore the world wide web, at 7 banuţi a minute I can afford to surf for an hour or two a day. My site-mite, Mary, got me into iTunes about 8 months ago and I have become quite attached (addicted) to my podcasts (KEXP free song of the day, NBC - Meet the Press, the Onion News, and The President's Weekly Radio Address), album release updates, and the weekly free download. Sadly, with my poor Moldtelecom internet connection, it takes about an hour to download a four minute song.

I am currently a Peace Corps volunteer in the Republica Moldova. Moldova is a former Soviet republica (Moldavia) located west of Ukraine and east of Romania. It is a very small and poor country. In fact, it is the poorest country in Europe.

I am an agricultural/agribusiness volunteer. I have been "bombed out" in the south in a tiny village called Baimaclia.