Day 2 Moldova (aka Sarah’s Birthday, Which I Had To Miss And Had No Way Yet To Communicate To Her That I Was Thinking About Her)

Today begins training! Woot! It started with going into Chisinau by public transportation, and meeting at the Peace Corps headquarters. From there, our PCT mentors walked us around Chisinau. They showed us the piazza, where I could find anything I would want (mostly) to buy. We continued to walk around seeing various town sights before returning to the PC headquarters for a lunch with all the trainees, PCV, and PC staff. For the afternoon, we were introduced to Moldova and a little about how our finances work.

Between breaks, I was able to bond with Andrea over some of our anxieties. After talking with members of my training group, I was a little more nervous about things. Many of them speak another language and have study or traveled to other countries. And they were catching on to Romanian fairly quickly after only one night with their families, while I was still trying to figure out how to plug my electronics in. It’s unpleasant feeling like I still need to ask the questions everyone else already knows the answers to and needing to hear new words many times before remembering them, not just once from my host family. Andrea was feeling the same way I was, and it’s nice to not be alone in this feeling.

Afterwards, we had our first language lesson. The focus: the Romanian alphabet. We also practiced a few phrases to communicate with our host families. We were also given some of our immunizations.

When we returned to our village, Holly’s host mom was not home, so my host family invited her over to wait. Holly and I hung out on the families “deck” and related our anxieties (are you beginning to see a pattern in my conversations?). I told her how I wish I had more language experience like her so that learning Romanian would be easier. She told me of her anxieties of teaching since she had never taught before. Overall though, we both know we are going to enjoy our time here and look forward to what’s to come.

I met Daniel today. He speaks English as well as Diana. I enjoy hearing Diana and Daniel converse. It reminds me of my siblings. And it’s amusing hearing them consistently yelling to each other to help find the English word they are looking for.

After today, some worries have disappeared and many have developed. But it’s nice to know I’m not alone in my anxieties, and I have people to relate them to.