Pre-Service Training, Ploiesti, Romania -- February 24, 2007

After two days in Romania, tomorrow we will move to our "gazda" host homes, where we will live for the next ten weeks. We've had fun as a group, and done lots of bonding. I'm sure we'll be "family" for the next two years while we're serving together in Romania. There are 40 members of our Group 22, but we lost one in Philadelphia before we left the U.S,. due to illness. We have ten members over 50 years old, five married couples, and 25 members between 21 and 25 years of age. We will have classes together every day for the next two months, and the swearing-in ceremony, for those of us who make it, will be May 4th. Unfortunately there are usually some who drop out before that time. After that we'll be sent to our worksites, which will be located all over the country. We've been told our group will be assigned to small, rural communities, unlike the groups that have been here before ours. Today we started our language training, with the idea that we could at least be able to begin communicating with our host gazdas. We can say "thank you", but not a whole lot more. Today I found white roses and lilies as a guest gift for them, and the flowers smell so wonderful that the scent in our room is quite overpowering.

So far we've had several orientations, from the country PC administration, medical staff, safety and security (including from the embassy), and language and cross-culture preparation.  Today we talked about life with our host families, more medical, and had a short tour of Ploiesti.  Our classes will be held at a middle school, where the PC rented classrooms.  The children will also be attending school at the same time.  We start intensive language classes on Monday.  This is such a great group of people, I'm delighted and proud to be with them.  I received a Tetanus and the first of two Hepatitis A shots.  The medical doctors are just great, they obviously take good care of us and pay lots of personal attention to each volunteer.  No worries there, but they keep warning us about bites from stray mongrel dogs.  There is almost no violent crime here, but lots of petty theft.

The weather is fine, though it's colder and windy now.  It's a couple of degrees above freezing, and in open areas there's a skiff of snow and ice.  But it warms up during the daytime, and isn't nearly as cold as Philadelphia was (so glad I brought my coat, after all!).  I think it'll be spring soon.  We had a three-hour bus ride from Philly to New York City where we caught the flght to Europe at JFK.  Even though the bus went right through Manhattan and Times Square, we couldn't really see much.  Far off in the distance, really tiny, I could see the top half of the Statue of Liberty.  We had a four-hour layover in Frankfurt, but couldn't leave the waiting areas.  In Bucharest they whisked us into another bus for the one hour drive here.  We saw little towns with old ladies by the road, selling things -- mostly green stuff in bags (herbs?) and a couple of places that had piles of baskets.  There were some loaded down horse-drawn carts on the highway, and the architecture was interesting.  You could even spot some Turkish influences.  There's lots of new construction going on, mixed in with very old cottages and communist-era concrete apartment buildings (where many of us might be living). 

I've taken lots of photos, but they just made a new rule that prevents posting pictures of PC volunteers in a blog (for safety/security reasons).  We can show pictures of the country, local folks, events, markets and buildings,  but not each other.  I guess they don't want terrorists to know who we are, since PCVs are always the most vulnerable Americans in every country.  I'll email photos when I get a chance, though.  I plan to password-protect my livejournal blog website, so I can put pictures there.  The PC gives "administrative separations" for all sorts of reasons:  inability to learn the language, having a relationshnip with a CIA or DEA agent, being drunk or obnoxious in public, driving a car or riding on a motorcycle, riding a bicycle without a helmet, expressing political opinions in public, leaving the site overnight without notifying the main office of your whereabouts.  At all times we are neutral representatives of the USA, or, as the embassy guy liked to say, part of the US "mission".  So far, so good, it's just great.  I do wish they'd turn down the music, though, I think the only volume here is LOUD.

Baby Vivian! -- February 9, 2007

My new granddaughter Vivian was born in Bend, Oregon, on February 7, 2007, at 8:11 a.m., she weighed 7 lbs 11 ounces. And she's perfect! I'm so glad I was able to be here right after she was born. She's gorgeous! Lots of dark hair, adorable face, tiny hands and feet, and best of all, she's sweet and quiet (at least so far). It's hard to believe people come so small! You can see from one image that Matt's hand is almost as big as she is. For everyone who had fingers crossed for a girl, well they got one! Dara named her daughter after her dear elderly friend Vivian. In case you wonder, two-year-old Gus gave Daddy Matt the black eye, with an errant head butt. The whole family was able to be together in the family birthing room right after the c-section, much better than in the old days when the mother was alone. Thirteen-year-old Sabra was sick, so she hasn't been able to hold the baby yet.

I'm also including a couple of pictures from my visit with Grey, Mikey and Lorin in Las Vegas.

Yikes! Only two weeks till Staging! -- February 1, 2007 I've been commuting from my South Vegas condo up to Grey's North Vegas house every afternoon to spend the evenings with him and his kids. The traffic isn't bad, unless it gets near rush hour. Last night he and I went to dinner at his favorite "neighborhood" bar, since Lorin was with her mom and Mikey was at his girlfriend's house. The night before he cooked for all of us. It 's so great to be able to spend time with them. Grey was the sort of kid who took everything apart to learn how it worked, and sometimes could even put things back together again. After he left home when he was 18, my shop was full of "parts", or "aparts", to get rid of. Now he's a high-tech electronics wizard, and is a pro at fixing complicated things and putting them back together. Naturally he was determined to fix my ailing camera, and successfully did install the new LCD panel in it. Unfortunately, the zoom still wouldn't work, so he just had to keep taking the camera apart to figure out what was wrong. As more screws came out and more pieces were laid aside, I was thrown back into the past, nervously eyeing all the parts everywhere, sipping wine and groaning. Sure enough, he did find the problem, it was a tiny shard of glass from the broken LCD that had jammed the zoom gear. After fixing that, he replaced the many electrical ribbon connections and all those screws, but then the camera wouldn't work at all anymore! I could only laugh. Turns out a small tear in a ribbon had broken through a couple of tiny wires. I imagine he'll keep trying to fix it, but I think it was worth the cost of the LCD to see him in action again. I'm the one who dropped it, after all, and it's just "stuff". I'll have to get another camera, anyway. And it almost worked! I was very impressed with his capability, those big hands doing that delicate work with those teeny weeny screws.As a reward for his efforts, I bought T-bone steaks that we'll grill tonight. Tomorrow morning he agreed to go with me to a make-up Rotary meeting, then in the afternoon we'll all come out to the condo for the weekend. I've been hearing from more of the new volunteers in Peace Corps Romania Group 22, and we're planning to get together for dinner in Philadelphia on Sunday night, Feb 18, after we all get there. Our meetings start Monday afternoon, last all day Tuesday, and then we get bussed early Wednesday morning for the flight to Bucharest. I keep taking clothes out of my suitcases to lighten them up, boxing stuff for future shipping. It seems like an endless battle, deciding what is important enough to take. It helped to buy a couple new wrinkle-proof outfits, suddenly many old clothes seemed disposable. Cheyenne is getting to be best buddies with Grey's yellow lab Rosie. They are constantly play-wrestling, and I'll include a little picture of them, along with one of Grey and Mikey arm wrestling.