Bălți

At this point it has been almost two weeks since my last post, but the time has been flying. To start, I am no longer living or teaching in Orhei. Towards the end of last week I moved out of the house I'd been staying at, and stuffed all my belongings into a closet here in the New Hope offices in Chisinau. I've been doing a lot of traveling with the crew here at NewHope, so basically I've been staying at a different place every few days. Although I am back in the town of Cahul now, I spent the majority of last week in a city called, Balti.  As an anti-trafficking organization, one of the main focuses remains heavily on the orphans. So many of the innocent girls that have fallen victim to the underground business have done so simply because they were uneducated on the subject. Also, as sad as it is, many of the girls willingly sell themselves into the business out of desperation. Because of this, NewHope (and a handful of other similar orgs. in the country) spends a great deal of time and energy in providing both an education on the issue, and hope. So for a few days or so I had the opportunity to tag along with the crew from the northern region, and visit a couple orphanages on the outskirts of Balti. Basically, we put on an assembly for the kids that includes a few games, a short movie/cartoon with a positive message, and spoken message usually about, or relating to potential. I have actually been asked to be the speaker at all the orphanages I've been to so far, which has been a pretty awesome experience! One orphanage I visited last week was in an old Moldovan village. A real old Moldovan village. I definitely felt like I went back in time a few hundred years. People were riding carriages pulled by horses, donkeys, and cows. I saw old women walking down the street carrying huge buckets of water that they had just filled up from the local well. I'm pretty sure any of these old Moldovan women could kick my ass. It's freezing outside, they just walked however far to the well, filled up two huge buckets with water, they got no gloves, they gotta' walk however far back, while carrying the water, and they seem like it's not even a big deal - or like things could be worse. Haha anyways, it was an awesome experience to be able to spend some time in a village like that.

In Moldova, Balti is known as "The Russian City." The majority of the population speaks Russian, many of them not knowing any Romanian at all. Signs, advertisements, it's almost all in Russian, which has been pretty interesting. I've been having fun trying to learn the language, which is much more difficult than Romanian; but would also be much more useful in the future. For the four nights I was there I stayed with a young couple, Anatol and Mihaiella, who through Anatol are related to my buddy Alex, who also works for NewHope. Anatol's father has a boatload of bee's on his property, so during the summer he collects a whole lot of honey. So on my last morning, the couple gave me as a gift, probably 10 pounds worth of honey. It looks nothing like honey you'd find in a store in America, I've been told thats because it's fresh and natural.... So banking on that, I've been eating a whole lot of it. I've also had people tell me that what appears to me as two year old milk, is fresh and natural....

I'm back in Cahul for the week. I'll be visiting a handful of orphanages and public schools over the next several days, so I'm pretty excited to see how it all goes. Since I am no longer living in one set place, it has been, and will be harder to access my computer easily. I'll do my best to keep you guys updated on what's happening! This trip doesn't just have to be for me! Please let me know if you want any information on how to get involved with what's going on; either here in Moldova or elsewhere! I'm glad to help.



Love And Be Loved

We've been putting these posters up all over different cities. They provide information for people who are interested in working abroad; since that is basically the number one way people become involved in human trafficking.

That's my man Joseph, pretending to be spiderman on top of the closet. He was one of the two children I lived with for two months in Orhei.