A second-hand sweater for your vote

I had my first two conversation groups over the past couple of days. The first was yesterday at the Educational Advising Center. I'll be hosting a session there every Thursday for an hour in the afternoon, and I really enjoyed the group of people that showed up yesterday. There were 11 total and they were mostly high school and college students but there were also a couple of older men who are in the work force. One is a doctor who happened to just do a study concerning trafficking victims and post traumatic stress disorder. They all speak English very, very well, and they were eager to debate each other about various issues. There wasn't a set topic for discussion so we just started talking and would talk about whatever came up and branched off from different ideas as they arose. For most of the time we talked about migration, the election, and corruption in Moldova. Some things that were mentioned:

-My grandmother is voting for the Communists because a man from the party came by and gave her a blue second-hand sweater.
-I'm sick of hearing about the elections.
-I'm not voting and it's my choice not to vote.
-You're an idiot for not wanting to vote.
-I think I should vote because if I don't someone else will take my ballot and vote for me.
-If Moldovans want to travel abroad, they get Romanian passports so they can travel freely in the EU. Since Moldova used to be part of Romania, it's really easy to get them. If your grandparents were once considered Romanian then it's no problem. Otherwise, you just have to pay some money.
-In America, people get rich and then go into politics. In Moldova, people go into politics to get rich.

I had a lot of fun with the group. They were a lively bunch. Definitely looking forward to seeing them more in the future. Today, I went to another discussion group for an English club at the Pedagogical University in the English Teaching Resource Center. The topic was "Television in Our Lives." I'd say there were about 15 people there, mostly students and a couple of professors. One professor was from Ribnitsa in Transnistria and had brought some of her students because she said they never have the chance to meet native speakers of English. I offered to come visit their university at some point since I want to visit Ribnitsa to see Winrock's resource center there as well. I also got to meet a professor who works in the American Studies department at Moldova State and she asked me to come do a presentation there as well. Looks like I'm going to start getting a bit busier. I really enjoy meeting all these new people though.