Thank you!

I have about 7 weeks left now in Moldova.

This past week was the last week of classes. Tomorrow is “final bell”: a ceremony with lots of flowers and teachers/students speaking for the community in front of the school. I will be expected to speak for everyone so tonight I will try to translate my thoughts. I already put some of my thoughts down on paper… I want to basically honor the few people here with whom I have worked closely—partners and students.

One of my closest friends, Suzanne, will leave Moldova in the early a.m. this Tuesday. She decided to finish her service after final bell to have the summer in New Jersey with her fiancé. She’ll have a great summer at home. Of course, the rest of us will be following suit within the next 2 months, but it’s still strange for reality—the temporariness of it all—to set in.

I’m pretty sad about saying goodbye to Suzanne… I’m sad about saying goodbye to all of my friends here. My PC colleagues are a tight group. When we’re not in person we talk on the phone multiple times per day and over the years I’ve found myself skyping and emailing back and forth with them more than with family and remaining contacts in America. To those American contacts that I have kept up with over the years—and those of you specifically who have done so much to keep in touch with me… The letters, postcards, care packages, visits to Raleigh to see me last summer and quite awesome Moldova visits… THANK YOU! You really can’t even imagine how much getting one postcard in my Chisinau mailbox meant. I know some of them were stolen or lost along the way, so I appreciate you sending more until they reached me! You are all true friends and I thank you for remembering me and wanting me to stay a part of your life over these years. Special thank you to Nina for being such an amazing volunteer in our village before my 2008-2010 service. Thank you for being so supportive to me and really paving way for me to better integrate and better understand my surroundings. Your advice and ear--especially during the past two winters--meant more than you probably know. Thank you for caring about me and taking interest in me and my experience even though your service had ended. You care so much for other people and for this village out of the goodness of your own heart. You're amazing.
My family has been huge support and I love my mom and dad for always making time to skype with me, email every week, make sure I receive a gift for Christmas, and even call my landline phone (the pre-20th century state of my first year in Moldova). Thank you mom and dad for listening to me, especially during the times I’ve been upset and depressed. You have always listened to me with loving and supportive ears and you listened without making judgments. During some of these points I’m not even sure how you did this, as I’ve doubted my own sanity many times over the past two years. I’m most appreciative of your desire and ability to try to understand my reactions—the happy, the sad, and the sometimes very angry—to things and places that you have never seen and felt with your own eyes and hands. Thank you for your openness as I tried to make sense of and fit into a place and culture that while beautiful and part of our own world, sometimes felt to me like another planet.

It’s hard to imagine being in Moldova without these people that I met two years ago in Philadelphia. I vaguely remember my life before Moldova and I feel like I’ve known my friends here my entire life. Suzanne agreed that we feel as close to most of our friends here as we do with people from home that we’ve known for over a decade. “Sucul Moldovei… din concentrat”: it’s like a concentrated juice “fel de” friendship building. I haven’t ever before had this much day-to-day time and space away from other people to think as I have had here in Moldova… I haven’t ever before had this same need or realization of my need for these people and their support. Our jobs in the villages depend on being able to build relationships and the relationships we have with volunteers are irreplaceable in ensuring our success in this process. We understand each other. We often share the same problems, realizations, stresses, loves, failures and successes. Another friend said, “We’ve all seen and been with each other through our very best and very worst moments.” It’s true. And we all share some common, driving forces that made us want to commit such a large chunk of our lives to being here in Moldova. Many great things have been accomplished and learned over these two years and to me it has been worth it.