Pennsylvania. On Wednesday, June 9, I woke up quite early in the morning. With my bags packed and my clothes set aside, I quickly got dressed and dragged my two large bags to the elevators to find 69 of my peers waiting downstairs with their respective bags. The lobby was a modest 40 ft. by 100 ft. So, if you can imagine, there were 69 young adults with twice as many bags squeezed into an area that was not logistically made for us. Within an hour of my arrival we had successfully: organized our bags to make a path for other patrons and guests, accounted for every volunteer to be downstairs and ready to go, eaten breakfast, placed our special white yarn on each of our bags which costs us $4 (and now as I am here in my humble Moldovan abode, I find that we in America live rather lasciviously), checked out of our room, mailed our financial deferment papers to their respective lenders, said final ‘goodbye’ to our staging coordinators, called our parents to say that we are shipping off in a matter of minutes, laughed about the night(s) we had before, and finally loaded our bags onto the 3 buses that were to take us on our 2 hour trek from Philadelphia, PA to our airport in New York.
New York. This was an interesting few hours. Separation. Our instructions as far as New York were to gather ourselves and in an organized fashion disperse both passports and plane tickets from New York to Moldova. Needless to say, gathering ourselves was not successful. La Guardia airport in New York is extensively confusing. We had to essentially take an in-house train to another location within the airport to get our tickets and wait at the terminal, but we were not all together. The responsibility of dispersing the tickets and passports was left to a privileged few. Those unnamed few were nowhere to be found. We were ready to go, had no tickets, and no leader. But believe me, we are a collection of born leaders and many stepped up. In a short time, our leaders arrived with our tickets and passports. Stand-by. Whew! Tickets and passports in hand, we were more than ready for a change of scenery. Not so fast, buddy! There was yet another rift in the wormhole. Apparently, booking of our tickets was a little shifty. We were on stand-by. For those that don’t know, stand-by pretty much means that a passenger waits for the next flight with a vacancy and is allowed on the plane when it is pretty much clear that there is an available seat. So, imagine 69 of us with tickets that are stand-by only. Not so fun. We were more than confused, but despite the confusion rather patient. Approximately one hour later, the stand-by status was lifted and our line began to move. We got our boarding passes, through security, and were finally at our terminal.
Airplane. The airplane was a whole other environment on its own. It was a blast. People were very restless, but again very patient. We had 69 energetic young adults in a confined aircraft. Too much fun. With my seatbelt on, I had successfully: shared dozens of stories, put stories and voices to faces and names that we only knew from Facebook and briefly in Philadelphia, had a few celebratory toasts, played a game of iPad Monopoly, and almost started a company right on the airplane. It was pretty fun.
Germany. This airport stop was very interesting. I learned a lot about the Euro and other nefarious adventures that you can have in a German airport. If New York wasn’t fun enough, then Germany was the place for it. They, at least, still spoke English. Our airline had successfully found seats for all of us and room for our bags, except for one of us. Suckage! Her bags did not make it to the transfer. They were taken off of the plane and we had to arrange for her bags to be readmitted without having to pay for them. It really sucked. Nobody had any problems except for one friend. With common airport hospitality, we had to wait for approximately 3 hours. Finally, we worked it out and then proceeded to hour purgatorial wait for an additional three hours in which time we had shared more stories, took pictures, serenaded eachother, played theoretical drinking games, and most importantly napped. At the end of our 3 hour stint in the airport we made it to the plane and within another few hours we were in Moldova. Wow!
Moldova. It was hot. We were in a place that spoke zero English. It was very real. We made it to the airport security check with no problems. Already, I could see my colegii scrounging for the language translations that we didn’t bother to study up until this point. Buna ziua! Me cheama Raymond. These phrases had escaped my vernacular. I studied them at home as did so many others but with so much going on, learning Romaneste was the last thing on our minds…up until now. We landed in the capital of Chisinau (keesh-now, if I hadn’t already posted this). We found our bags, except for one other friend. Apparently we had better luck than other generations (we are M25’s). It surely did not feel like it. It felt like someone/thing was out to get us. We stayed two days one night in Chisinau in which we got our initial hazing which, for the guys, consisted of having a moustache that rivaled Don Jose’s, took our first language lesson in limba Romana, exchanged money, received our first installment of the local currency (lei), spent a lot of lei on bere (relatively $0.85 for a liter), met our mentors whom are responsible for bring us up from mentees to successful volunteers. We are currently classified as “trainees” not yet “volunteers” until we are officially sworn in after our PreService Training (PST aka purgatory aka limbo).
Now, after two weeks I am sitting in my room rather comfortable with my situation. I have all the amenities that I would have back home in the states. I requested to live with a big family and boy do I have a familia mare. I have a mother, step-dad, brother (who is in Odessa), sister and another little brother. It is like having cousins that I have not met yet. They treat me very very well as if I was their long lost own. It is really comforting. I can get into details, but that would have to be in private. For now, just know that I am very much at home and I definitely am feeling the love here. Btw, the fuchsia in my room are doing so well. It is really very amazing. I have two potted plants of fuchsia and they are as my mom would say are thriving. Mom, I miss you so much. I love you!!!
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