Largest wine cellar in the world

My time here in Moldova is winding down. Melissa left for the States this morning and Liz left a few days ago. I had a nice time with Melissa in Orhei this weekend at her goodbye dinner Saturday and picnic with her tutor's family on Sunday. My host family insisted on calling her last night and putting her on speakerphone to say a final goodbye. This consisted of Grigory telling her how great she is, wishing her happiness and success and most importantly wishing her luck in finding a good man. Naturally, everyone we have met in Moldova will be invited to her wedding.

Last week we finally made it to Milestii Mici, the biggest wine cellar in the world. I'm not just saying that; they have an official certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records. You have to get a taxi or have a car to do the tour because you drive through the cellar. It's enormous. There are street signs with the names of the types of wines that are stored in the barrels on each specific row. I think the most interesting fact we learned on the tour was that at one point during the time of the Soviet Union Gorbachev went on a campaign against alcoholism and wanted all the places like Milestii Mici to be destroyed. There's a secret room in the cellar where they hid all their best wine in case this were to happen. Another tidbit was that there's a very small door on each barrel so a tiny woman has to be the one to go in there and clean them. Maybe I've found my calling.

Domestic Violence and Trafficking Seminar in Cenac

Yesterday I went to a village about 80 km south of Chisinau to give a domestic violence and anti-trafficking seminar for 7th, 8th, and 9th grade girls. A Peace Corps volunteer set it up for me with his colleague. I was a little stressed about it because it was the first time I would be leading this kind of an event and I had to do it all in either Russian or Romanian. I ended up doing a little bit of both languages. I spoke primarily in Russian but the girls answered questions in Romanian and I had a lot of materials (handouts, brochures) in Romanian as well. Almost everything I did in the first part came from previous Winrock trainings. At the beginning of the class I had each girl (there were about 30) come to the front of the room and something she is good at. Common responses were dancing, drawing, writing poetry, and singing. Then she had to write something on the board under the heading "Good thoughts about women." After that I had one girl read a story from the "16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence Campaign" that Winrock participated in back in November. The story was a pretty shocking retelling of acts of domestic violence. The idea behind putting these 2 activities together is to give the girls a sense of pride in being a woman from all the positive thoughts they gathered about women and then to show how distressing it is that so many women endure this kind of violence. Next, I had printed out statements about domestic violence and the girls were split into groups to discuss whether or not the statements were myths or realities. They then read their statements to the class, gave their opinion, and then read a paragraph that gave reasons for whether the statement was true or false.

The second half of the seminar focused on domestic violence. We watched a very powerful film, "Lilya 4 Ever" that has often been used for trafficking awareness and is also just a great movie. We stopped halfway through for them to answer questions and then had a discussion at the end as well. The seminar continued for over an hour after the end of the school day so I was really pleased that most of the girls decided to stay even though they didn't have to. It was great to go to a school in a village that is so remote and difficult to get to because they don't get the attention from NGOs and government projects that other areas receive. I wish I had started doing trainings like these earlier on in the year because they are a bit difficult to set up logistically and I probably won't get around to doing another one in the next month.

To give a better sense of how difficult it is to get in and out of the village, I wasn't able to get back to Chisinau last night because there was no transportation. The only bus out of the village to Cimislia (a bigger town where you can get buses to Chisinau) leaves at 7 am and is always full. It's a huge bus from the era of the Soviet Union that has an exhaust pipe on the inside that blows exhaust into the face of one unlucky passenger in the seat in front of it. It took 45 minutes to go 7 km because the road is so bad from Cimislia to the village Cenac where I was staying.

There is no high school in the village so if you want to continue your education you have to do so in Cimislia. Since there is no viable transportation, your family has to be able to pay for you to stay in dorms during the week. This means that a lot of young people in Cenac stop their education after the 9th grade. I was really impressed with the middle school though. They have a nice building and some great projects and activities for the students to participate in.

Albania: Best trip of the year

I had an awesome time with Liz in Albania. I mentioned in one of my previous blogs that Madrid tried really hard to swing me over to team Western Europe and failed but Albania is definitely holding my interest. I would love to make a more extensive trip across the Balkans in the future. Anyway, I'll start from the beginning of our trip.

We took a night train from Chisinau to Bucharest on Monday night, leaving at 5:30 pm and arriving in Bucharest at 7 am. We met a couple of Americans on the train who are on a faith-based program that sends them around the world doing mission work for 10 months. We also got trapped out of our wagon for 2 hours in the middle of the night when we wanted to sleep because we made the mistake of going to use the nicer bathrooms that were in the dining car. Other than that the trip was unremarkable.

The weather in Bucharest was beautiful and we sat by the lake in Youth Park all day because our flight wasn't until 7 pm. We had a picnic and watched people jogging and biking. This is something you would never see in Moldova.

Our flights went on schedule and we arrived in Tirana at 11:30 pm. We stayed at a hostel the first night because we were getting there so late but we met up with another Fulbright student the next day and stayed at his apartment for the next two nights. His place was really nice and it's located right in the city center so we could walk just about everywhere. We had quite a bit of time to explore the city and were lucky to have beautiful weather. We took a cable car up to the top of Mt. Dajty and had a gorgeous view. Liz was pretty terrified on the way up and we probably wouldn't have gone if we'd known what it was going to be like but in the end it was worth it. There's a hotel/restaurant at the top of the mountain that has a rotating bar on the top floor that gives another nice view. That night we went to another rotating bar on the top of the Sky Tower and got to look out at the Tirana city lights.

Something we really enjoyed was the fact that food is so inexpensive in Albania. You can get a huge, delicious meal in a nice restaurant for $5. There are 10 cafes with outdoor seating on every block. Both the Americans and Albanians we met said that you would think people never work because these cafes are always full in the middle of the work day. The salaries are comparable to those in Moldova but living expenses in general seem to be a lot less. Before this trip I had maybe had 2 cups of coffee in my entire life but I had at least 8 over 3 days in Albania. I cappuccino would be about $1.50 and they always bring a glass of water with it for free too.

On Friday we took a mini bus to Vlora, a beautiful beach town in the south. We met two students, Semi and Marsela, on the bus and Semi said she would invite us to her parent's house. We spent the first day on our own walking along the beach and taking in the scenery but the next day we met up with those girls and they took us all around town in their cousin's car. At night we went to Semi's house and met her mom, dad, sister, brother-in-law, cousin, grandfather, and some others.

A couple of the guys spoke English well because they had worked abroad so they told us about Albanian life and politics which was really interesting. They cooked us traditional food that included a spinach, egg and cheese dish, rice pilaf, pasta, salad, and homemade bread. We also took a walk to explore their huge expanse of farmland. Semi's brother-in-law said that if I want they will give me a plot of land so I can build a house there with my Albanian husband.

We spent the next day with the family as well and went around to the houses of some other relatives. One house was way up on the mountain and had a gorgeous view of the ocean.

I wish we'd had more time to see other places in Albania but Semi's mom already invited Liz and I to her son's wedding that's coming up in two years so maybe we'll be back in the near future.

Click here to see more pictures.