MoldovAnn

The activities this week were very successful. Despite the short notice and oppressive heat, 4 workshops were well attended and very productive. The IREX/CPP consultant spent 2 days with 3 community organizations assisting them in writing up their grant proposals for support from the Citizen Participation Project. Trainers from the Association of Women of Gagauzia in Comrat spent Thursday and Friday facilitating workshops on working abroad/trafficking, women and business, and job search skills. We had a good mix of girls and women, 14-40, attending the seminars and all said they were informative, helpful and very interesting.

I’m settling back in to “life in the village.” It was incredibly hot and humid all week, so noone’s been doing much of anything. How I long for swimming pool on days like these! To make matters even more uncomfortable, the water was shut off for 2 days for unknown reasons. One afternoon we had a refreshing rain and I figured it was the closest thing I’d get to a shower for awhile, and I thoroughly enjoyed the walk home in the rain! I got some strange looks, but I didn’t mind.

Saturday I made gazpacho soup for my host family, with fresh-picked tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, garlic and onion all from their garden. It was delicious, and much to my delight they enjoyed it too. Anya was particularly impressed that the dish required absolutely no cooking! Despite the overwhelming heat and humidity, she nonetheless cooks hot meals every day for lunch and dinner.

I’m in Chisinau today and tomorrow to attend to some business and to visit Anya in Ialoveni. The modem in the Tvarditsa Information Center at the library has been broken for going on 6 weeks, and as I understand it, it’s quite a bureaucratic nightmare to get approval to purchase a new one. So, to those of you who have been waiting for blog entries and/or have been emailing me, please be patient! For the forseeable future, I’ll only have email when I travel elsewhere. I’ll post and email when I can, but please don’t let that stop you from writing to me! It’s nice to have lots of emails when I do get online.