3 days at a resort—Ha

September 17, 2009--3 days at a resort—Ha

First off, I have a proposition… I have about four posts that I would like to load onto my blog. I don’t want to post them all at once because no one reads the old ones. So I won’t post another one until there are at least 3 comments on this post, same for the subsequent posts. Deal? Oh yeah, they can’t only be from my mom either. J

Anyways…

I left my computer and internet at home for about 3 days last week. It felt incredible. I need to ditch the ol’ ball and chain more often. I will say that it was pretty easy to do so though because I was at a PC conference. The agribusiness volunteers and the Community Development volunteers got to take their partners to a training that was held at a pretty nice resort called Водул Луй Водэ (Vodul lui Voda). I felt like it was a very productive and worthwhile seminar that consisted of getting to know the variety of people taking on the challenge of Peace Corps volunteers. We also had translators so the plethora of things that have been lost in translation over the last month were made a little bit more clear—definitely still not crystal clear, but hey I’ll take any progress. We basically had a variety of icebreakers (which are much more interesting when you don’t speak the same language), informational sessions and of course post seminar late night meetings with at the beach.

The walk to the beach, which reminded me of the lost boys from Peter Pan:

The beach:

Now I was confused about this beach because some people told me that the sand was brought in from somewhere in the world so they could have an amazing resort close to the capital. When I tried to pantomime and half-ass explain this to my partner I got a puzzled look and was told that the sand had always been there. I am gullible from time to time but I have no idea who to believe here because both scenarios are suspect in my mind. The beach has a feeling of being way too random for its location in Moldova and it was huge, but my partner is from Moldova and would probably know. Oh well I guess, a beach is beach here in Moldova I am happy to see one.

One of my favorite moments at this resort came on the very first night. We finished up with the seminar for the day and went in search of party juice if you will. We were told that the old folks home next door (pictures above) had a small store that we could buy beer at. The prospect of buying beer at an old folks home was already funny to me, but the better part came when I had to catch up to the group of Peace Corps volunteers that had already gone to the store. I forgot something in my room and was lagging behind. The building was fairly large and leading up to it was one long path lined with benches on either side, these benches were chalk-full of retired folks. Now since I had come late, an entire mass of Americans had walked by asking directions prior to my arrival. I walked around the corner to see the mass of aged people staring at me. I think they sensed the Americanness of my swagger and promptly started pointing the way to the store. I never had to ask a single question, each time I made eye contact with someone I would either receive something close to bicycle hand signals or a friendly conformational nod of the head seemingly saying “hello and yes, you are on the right path.” After making it past the long line of whispering old timers I made it to the store where certain stocks of certain beverages were mysteriously depleted except for a few warm bottles.

Ah Party Juice:

My friend Dave with 3 of the partners:

My partner is featured below on the right hand side:

Lots of crows circling overhead at the beach:

That is all for today... rememeber the agreement.