May 2012
3 posts
Animal X outside of our Hotel
We managed to pick one of the hip hotels in downtown Bucharest apparently as there was a live show last night by this Romanian Band “Animal X”. I forgot my FLIP camera, so pardon the audio but I got 2 songs on my Windows Phone. They are setting up a stage right now for another show tonight as well!
April 2012
7 posts
Paştele Blajinilor ( Dia de los Muertos )
The Easter celebration in Moldova lasts for 2 weeks culminating with Memorial Easter the Monday a week after Easter. It involves heading to the cemetery where families have often constructed or bring tables near the graves of their loved ones. The family prepares small gift bags or just loads of gifts which are given out similar to Trick or Treating. People can stop by and visit and wine is...
WatchAmazing Interview between Jon Stewart and President Clinton @ the Clinton Global Initiative University. CGI but for College Students.
Web 2.0 in Cazangic
The project I have been working on since December has finally come to fruition and I’ve just been waiting for approval approval to tell you about it. My English club work has morphed at times into the cultural, educational and technical worlds. Plus I think they are just bored with English at times. An example is we took a break to make some faux interviews for this project- think...
Cricova annual export one million bottles of wine... →
Look no further east than Moldova if you want to see the Rise of China. The wine maker Cricova recently just signed a MOU with China to purchase 1 million bottles of Cricova wine over a period of time still to be set. It is so awesome to see globalization at work. Moldova has been choked for many years by the Russian government’s monopoly on Moldovan wine going so far as to require all...
March 2012
9 posts
Getting ready for a big presentation this morning
its the little things that are different here in Moldova. I am generally going through the same rituals I’d go through in the U.S except for the cleaning the mud off my nice shoes with a scrub brush, walking 2 kilometers to the bus stop in the next town over and taking a hour and a half bus ride. Whoops, forgot to let the geese out the gate!
Law Enforcement
The differences in style and substance is stark between the United States and Europe in general but especially between Eastern Europe and or Eurasia and the U.S. For one the Attorney General staff tend to dress like military people:
Second, there is only a state police and no local police. So there is no accountability to the local people. Third, even with the police power concentrated like...
A nation smitten with social media →
The inverse reality outside of the west is very interesting. Only 44% of kids in my village use a computer for the internet by 88% use their mobile phones. And almost 1\3rd have purchased something online using their mobile as well. But zero have credit cards…..
Even though fewer than 25 per cent of Indonesia’s 240m citizens are online, the country is already Facebook’s third-largest...
Appendectomy.
My host dad had his appendix out last week, which was very scary and made me feel very stupid. He had all the signs and even I didn’t realize it. I should have. Though its hard to address the symptoms in another language as it needs to be exact. He is resting in the hospital right now but I guess the thing that angered me so much is he spent almost 24 hours in pain as the doctors tried to...
February 2012
14 posts
How an African Chief Uses Twitter to Keep the... →
An African administrative chief uses Twitter to help solve problems and maintain order in his Kenyan village, showing another example of how social media has evolved beyond wired metropolises to reach even the most previously unconnected corners of the globe. Chief Francis Kariuki — or, @Chi…
The last barrier
One of the things I learned quickly in Moldova is that you can’t please everyone because some people just won’t like Americans. This is due to a lot of different factors, but its just a fact. Oftentimes though, its just a matter of warming up to you. My best example is from my Peace Corps mentor, Natalie, who spent almost an entire year being ignored by her Mayor only to be invited...
IMF Survey: "Moldova Growing Strongly Despite... →
Good and bad news from the IMF but overall moving forward!
Located between Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south, Moldova has quietly and steadily been implementing a series of economic reforms, supported by a 3-year program under the IMF’s Extended Credit Facility.
“Gotta love when you go to the school to get the Principal’s signature on...”
January 2012
10 posts
Losing volunteers
We lost 2 more awesome volunteers this past week… It is one of the differences between this world and the world of politics. They are similar in that you work together with someone for a short period of time but in such intense situations that you form an almost never-ending story with them. Except no luck dragon … But in the political world, you usually don’t lose people mid...
“On TV, Natalia Morari wears severe spectacles and her hair pulled back into a...”
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Moldova’s stuck in search for unity
Activist credited with the 2009 Twitter revolution among the critics as ex-Soviet state struggles to find a new identity
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/03/moldova-struggle-since-russia-revolt
Santa Visits Cazangic
Thanks to Moldcell we got to make a very Merry Christmas for some kids- Moldcell is the “other” cellphone company in Moldova that is purple instead of Orange’s “Orange”. Here are the rest of the photos!
I filmed the whole thing and once I can translate these stupid Mp4s to WMV, I can make the video- until then I spent my nights screaming at Microsoft and Cisco...
December 2011
16 posts
My very first project!
A NGO run by former Peace Corps volunteers named “Water Charity” helps sponsor very small water related projects in Peace Corps countries. They are small projects but big impact! My project is simple. We don’t have hot water in our school. The Soviets did build one when they built the school but its sewer fell into disuse and so the bathrooms and hot water system became...
