From inside apartment 6

It’s raining outside right now, which is a good thing, because firstly rain is calming and fun to listen to, and secondly, this has been a horribly dry season for Moldova. Many of the fruits didn’t reach full growing potential and we even missed some all together. (Apricots! Walnuts!) So, let it rain, let it rain, let it rain.

Girls’ soccer, which I was so excited about in the last entry and week, has sort of fizzled out. Not because of lack of interest, but because summer is a hard season to organize anything. Half of the girls are at summer camps, the others are in various countries working with their mothers, and the rest are vacationing with their families, tending to their gardens, or visiting grandparents in the villages. I made a deal with the two girls that did keep coming every Tuesday and Thursday, that in September we will re-start our season. That way everyone will be back in town, in school, and it’ll be a more official after-school activity. I’m a little bummed it didn’t work out in the summer since I was looking forward to lots of running around in the sunshine, but in a way I’m ok with it because it’s one less Amy responsibility because we all know how lazy I can be- especially in the summer.

Last summer, before I left, I spent my days lounging on that small black and gold couch in my bedroom, downloading music and petting sleeping Roxanne. Then she and I would walk around town. I would ride my bike until I bumped into acquaintances and then did whatever the day lead to. Sometimes I would go to the pool. It was very liberating not having a job or anywhere to be, but it was also a little depressing. I was using the time before I left to just be whatever. My grandpa had just died (soon it will have been a year, July 17th. Fuck.) my boyfriend had moved away and I was soon leaving the country for a very long time. It was quite the transitional time, and I wasn’t really sure what to do with myself, but let myself wade through summer anyways.

This summer I have a new excuse for lounging around… It’s summer!! When we first got out here Peace Corps has told us that usually in winter and spring volunteers sort of get acclimated but then work really picks up in the summer. For me it was the opposite. I got here and immediately started working on a lot of shit, and then found that in my town, everything slows down a lot in the summertime. Many people leave to go work abroad or vacation. People are generally a little less work busy, and more life busy in the summer. People aren’t really up for starting and working on projects in the summer, and that’s just fine with me. So I’m using this time to keep doing what I’ve been doing, and thinking ahead.

However, yesterday I met with the mayor and the new mayor-adjunct who is actually this guy I had met at the discothèque in my first months here and already an acquaintance of mine. I had proposed to organize September as an awareness month where we’ll show free movies once a week throughout the month on the subject of migration and trafficking and then conduct a discussion. They were both into it, and so now the planning will begin. So that’s something new at least.

Today I’m preparing a presentation on Jews in Moldova, then and now, for the new group of volunteers. I’ll be going to Orhei tomorrow (one of the larger towns in Moldova, after Chisinau and Balti) and staying with my friend Annie that night. Then I’ll come back here in time for aerobics and dinner and sleep, perhaps with Tia as visitor.

This was a really boring, and not even funny entry. Sorry .I guess that’s what I get for procrastinating working on this presentation.