Peanut butter cookies

Hello world. I’m sitting in the Peace Corps lounge right now craving a cup of coffee, but I know that if I buy a single packet, the store clerk won’t give me change for the large bill I have in my wallet. This is actually quite a common occurrence here that can be quite amusing and frustrating at the same time. In Moldova the currency is the Moldovan lei, with about 11:1 ($ to lei) ratio, and they have 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500 lei bills, plus coins but they are made of plastic and are practically worthless and I don’t mess around with them. For some reason, the ATM at the bank in my village loves to give me 200 and 500 lei bills, which no one likes to accept. I tried buying some bananas and eggs the other day (my post workout ritual meal here in Moldova) and tried paying with a 500. The lady looked at me like I was insane. So I tried a 200, same “You are crazy if you think I will accept this” look. I had to go around to three different shops asking if they could break the bill. Frustrating.

Life is good here. It finally started getting cold again which caught me by surprise this morning. On the bus ride here I was pretty sure that I had frostbite in my toes and made sure to keep wiggling them to stay warm. I’m not sure if this actually helps, but I’m going to keep doing it hoping that it does something. Work has been good, nothing too exciting going on right now. We did find out that my organization is going to continually be funded by the government and USAID, which is always good seeing that my partners and I would be out of a job if it wasn’t it. I let the cat out of the bag to my partners and told them that I wanted to move to a small village so I can be in the proximity to farmers and the land. It seemed to shock them that I want to move to a smaller village, and give up amenities such as indoor plumbing, hot water, a shower, etc, but when I explained that I thought I would be living in a hut for the two years, and wanted that, they seemed enthusiastic to find me a place to live. So for the next two weeks I will be traveling to several villages, making masas, and seeing if anything catches my fancy. I’ve got a pretty good idea that it will involve lots of food and festivities, and seeing that it is custom here to get your guests nice and liquored up (you have failed as a host if your guests don’t stumble out the door) it should be interesting.

This is actually something new with work. At the beginning of every month I have to type the action plans that each of the ten local consultants submit to us, compile this data in a master spreadsheet, and send it to the main office in the capital. This work is delegated to me because I can type a thousand times faster than they can, and it’s a way to keep me occupied and makes me feel like I am contributing. I asked my partner why the consultants don’t send these to us in the electronic form, saving me a day’s worth of work. This turned into an organic discussion and for the next couple months I will be spending a couple days with each of the consultants in their villages teaching them computer skills for a day, and then the next day they will be teaching me about their areas of expertise in agriculture. Win-win-win, 20 days spent getting in touch with the people. Alright peeps, I’ve got to go out and shake some more hands, kiss some more babies.