Thursday, January 13, 2011

Half a year i Moldova

Today is it exactly six months since I arrived in Moldova, which means that I only have 4½ months left before I go back to Denmark. So far it has been a good experience. Lots of up's and down's but I guess thats normal. It has (already) been a long winter and to be honest Chisinau isn't a very nice city in the winter. In the summertime there's a lot of trees that makes it a very green city but when the leaves fall from the trees, it becomes very obvious that it's mostly Soviet-style concrete buildings here. Also the streets gets muddy very easily when its raining and they dont do nothing when it's snowing to prevent the streets from being all icy and slippery. But except for the 'winter-issues' I like it here. I'm starting to understand some parts of the culture and to understand a little Romanian. I'm still not very good at it and once again foreign language has proven difficult to learn. I had lessons twice a week in november and december and it helped a bit but i tend to forget the words.

I stayed here in Moldova for christmas even though most other volunteers were going home. I was tempting to do the same but to reasons kept me here. I wanted to experience a moldovan christmas (or actually two moldovan christmas'es) which turned out to be okay but not nearly as good as all the memories I have of danish christmas. It might be because I'm getting older but i think christmas is meant to be spend with family. The other reason though is that when I go back to Denmark I want the felling of getting home after a year abroad and I think it would spoil it a bit if i went back for christmas. It might sound like a weak argument but it's quite important to me.

Tomorrow morning I will start on a new project. So from now on I will be working three different places. It's another center for children but at this place there might actually be work to do. It's quite early in the morning and I have to wake up at half past six. Kaori is a little concerned because she don't believe that I can wake up that early but I've managed to do so every day in 13 years so I might be able to do it again. Except for that I'm looking forward to it. I'm gonna be working with Kaori and hopefully I will get the feeling of being usefull.
My 'old project has become more and more boring and atm. it's mostly teenagers coming there to talk with there friends and watch television.
The place where I teach chess is nice. Except for teaching chess I help the kids with their homework when it's needed.

Yesterday we had a poker night at my flat. We played 5 people and used our bani's as none of us had any poker chips. When we started I had more than 400 coins which I had collected (they are worth so little so instead of having the trouble trying to pay with them I just put them in a drawer when i get them) but i lost a lot of them during the night. We played two rounds. The first of them didn't go so well and I went out as the second. I should have won second round but under very lucky circumstances Julien (my flatmate) won that one as well - and the bragging rights, which was the most important because after 5½ hours of playing I had lost 20 lei which is about 1,20 euro.

Thats all for now
Nikolaj