The cold is starting to hit me hard here in Moldova, though as a South Dakotan I should be embarrassed to say that. A month ago I was able to wear sandals to work and now I'm already layering tights under my pants and wearing three layers on top to hold me through the day!
This new season brings an end to the summer of fresh fruits, which started with cherries and moved to peaches, apricots, watermelon, pears, and until a few weeks ago--grapes and wine season. Wine season started around mid-September for only a few weeks when Moldovans pick the grapes in their large gardens or help a neighbor with theirs, or go into the field and gather their grapes all in one day and then make enough wine, on average 100 to 200 liters, to last through the rest of the year.
I was able to help a colleague of mine gather her grapes, which meant three hours on our hands and knees in about 20 rows of grapes in her backyard--- it's a pretty large garden. Along with a few other women we gathered all the grapes and the men then pressed the grapes and did the rest. Wine season was during our very short Fall.
This post is a little late and past due to me being quite busy- I spent two weeks back in my training village learning more Russian and more program training and learning exactly how to apply our skills to work, which has been useful now that I understand more of the issues and problems in my village.
And as for work, now that I'm back at site, I'm in the middle of reviewing some past grants my mayor's office wrote. One for a city park that hasn't won for the past three years. I'm also in the middle of reviewing my host mother's founding documents and strategic plan for an NGO she is starting. Up until now she has been doing work on her own, and she's decided it would be best to create an organization to continue the work into the future. She is already in the middle of managing a renovation project for a building in town that will serve the elderly meals during the day and be an after-school center for kids. I'm hoping to collaborate with another volunteer to help her organize and efficiently plan. And in two weeks I'll be helping with some Halloween celebrations at a nearby city, one at a university class and another at a high school prom. That should definitely be fun, but I'm struggling with figuring out a costume---any ideas? The day after that I'm going to the capital city with a local teacher here for training on a "Public Achievement" program, which trains local leaders to guide a small group of students in civic education, and helping them organize themselves to solve issues and problems they see in their own community. It's a program founded by the University of Minnesota and being applied in several countries...
More to come!
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