Three weeks in Târgu-Jiu -- May 26, 2007

In some ways it seems incredible that I've been here three weeks alsready, in other ways it seems I've been here forever. A week after my arrival, our Director Florin hired Ileana Corici as the first fulltime ARDR employee. She worked with him years ago, but hasn't been involved with the volunteers who are now at the office. That means we are both fresh, working together to create this new nonprofit organization. We seem to connect well, are both hardworking and dedicated, so it's a good thing. In a couple of months we'll be moving to new offices and many of the volunteers will be gone, including the one from the Peace Corps. Florin will be in Italy for his internship during the next two months, but we are in daily contact with him online.

On Thursday, Ileana and I traveled to our first village in the countryside. We will eventually visit more than a dozen communities where we will establish citizen networks and provide participation and management trainings. We loved the community of Ţanţareni, with its powerful and progressive woman Mayor, Prof. Maria Vasilescu, who has been in office for the past 12 years. Ţanţareni is what is called a "commune", and includes two larger communities and two small ones, totalling about 5800 population, including 500 gypsies (Rroma). The Mayor's office sponsors six kindergartens, one of which we visited. It was super clean, all the children and teachers wore slippers inside the building. Even the bathrooms were immaculate. The Mayor's office is responsible for several new buildings in the community, including a Cantina Bucateresa where dozens of poor people are fed two meals daily, and a new gymnasium at the main school, which also has a modern weight training facility and computer lab. The school director was happy to show us around and is very proud of his work there. He needed a little recognition of his authority at the beginning of our discussions, but is apparently very supportive of whatever training we can provide. The Mayor arranged a special lunch for us at the Cantina, it was wonderful. I have lots of pictures, will attach a couple to this update and put many more on the Flicker site. We are focusing mostly on establishing strong interpersonal relationships and getting to know each place. We will present actual project proposals in the future. We'll plan to visit one, or perhaps two, communities each week, and I'll get to really know the county of Gorj. We can only hope that our local contact will be as helpful and effective as the one in Ţanţareni, Bianca, who is legal counsel for the Mayor's office (Primarie).

My new grandchild is due this week, in Munich, Germany. I haven't talked to Peter or heard from him for a while, so I hope all is well. I finally managed to get credit at Yahoo Voice, so I can try this weekend to call his home phone. I didn't have much luck the first time I tried, but did finally get through to Mikey in Las Vegas, and then Dara in Oregon. I learned that I have to use my headset to talk, but at least it worked to get her on the computer so we could visit using Skype. I haven't been able to get credit put on Skype, though, since they don't allow payments from Romania. Once I get everything figured out, I may start calling friends, so don't be surprised when I call you! Being the only American in town, it's nice to hear a friendly voice speaking English now and then.

I can't say I've been completely well since I've been in Romania (three months already!), but I haven't been seriously sick, either, until now. I've had a sinus infection that I haven't been able to kick, but was always able to keep functioning. That is, until last night, when I got some serious food poisoning. I don't remember when I've been so sick! I was in town when it hit really bad, and I knew I'd probably have to throw up right there on the street! I could barely stand up, but managed to find a quiet bus stop next to an abandoned house, and leaned against the fence, vomiting repeatedly over it and into the yard. No one seemed to pay much attention, although there was a lot of traffic and pedestrians, which by itself is sort of amazing. Somehow I got myself home and except for dragging myself to the bathroom to throw up some more, I slept for more than 12 hours! Today I still don't feel good, but I guess I'll live. I simply can't figure out what I ate that did me in, but now I'm afraid to eat anything at all. Not that I could keep it down if I did.

Here are some photos:

It's official! I'm now a volunteer instead of a trainee! And finally, I'm at my Site -- May 10, 2007

Our swearing in ceremony was last Friday, at a lovely theater in Ploiesti, with the American Ambassador giving a nice speech, in fact they were all good... Ed's speech was very moving. It's posted here, if you want to read it... ED'S SPEECH. Our gazdas dressed up for the big event, and my practicum colleagues even came to see us "graduate" from our arduous ten weeks of training. The train trip to site with my heavy baggage wasn't exactly fun, but it would have been worse without having another volunteer from my group traveling with me. She stayed on the train to keep traveling, but at least she was able to help move stuff and be sure everything got off the train with me. I arrived in Targu Jiu about 9 p.m., and my gazda's husband Vasile met the train and took me to the house. I was tired, but they fixed us a late dinner, and we all enjoyed a nice evening together.

I'm at work today, but right now I'm the only person here! I was able to spend time with my PCV sitemate yesterday, and learned a few things about my new home. Hopefully we'll be able to share lots more information in the next month before she leaves. As far as I can tell, I'll be the only American in this city of 100,000. I've talked a lot with Florin, the director of ARDR where I'll be working, and have some idea of what to do while he's away for the next two months. My first task will be to find an apartment and get familiar with everything, then get a Romanian language tutor. Fortunately the other volunteer who has been here for two years is telling me where to find things: the gym, the one place where I can find tortilla chips (a teeny bag), the best place to get my hair cut, a cool new outdoor restaurant/bar (we went there for pizza last night, and it's nice by any standard, anyplace), and (I hope) will give me the lowdown on what it will be like to work here.

I can see one thing already -- I will have to learn to SLOW down! I am so used to working at top speed, all day, every day, and Romania just doesn't operate that way. Relax, Kristin! Get to know people and tone it down! Be patient. I've uploaded a bunch of new photos at the Flickr site link (above and on the main page), but I hope you know that if your computer already cached pages when you looked at them before, you must reload EACH page as you bring it up, in order to see the new pictures.

Hello, Targu Jiu!

The Goodbye day from Ploiesti -- with Cici, Georgeta, Gabi, and Simona --