Peer Support Training & Pieces of Home

Last Wednesday night I left my home in Oradea and made the 10 hour train trip to Bucharest for Peer Support Training. What is Peer Support you ask? While in the Peace Corps Volunteers have the opportunity to serve our fellow volunteers in a number of ways, one of them is the peer support committee. As I have written in this blog and any one of us could tell you, things are different here. As we adjust to these differences culturally, work wise, and socially it is sometimes helps to have someone to talk to, bounce ideas off of etc…. This is what the peer support committee is for; there are three of us from our group who have volunteered to serve in this way. I got into Bucharest on Thursday morning after traveling all night long on the train. This is actually not as bad as it sounds, as I take the sleeping car and sleep most of the way and wake up with just about hour to go. The only downside is that no matter how well I sleep on the train I still wind up feeling a bit tired.

After arriving Thursday morning I made my way to the Peace Corps Office and it was off to a medical appointment. Everything is ok thankfully but since I have been over here I have experienced some reoccurring medical issues and the medical office had set up some tests for me in order to get a clear picture of what may be going on. I have been so impressed with the professionalism and diligence of the medical staff over here, it many ways it is the best medical care I have every received. When the appointments were over I had the rest of the day to enjoy and explore Bucharest. I ran into another volunteer from my group who was also in town for medical care and we spent the afternoon catching up on our experiences so far. We shared some funny stories of things we have encountered and commiserated on the similarities of our service thus far.

I think one of the biggest challenges for volunteers in Romania is finding a sense of effectiveness. Romania is very advanced in a lot of ways, and the basic manual or tangible projects are harder to come by. I think when most people think of the Peace Corps they envision us hanging out in a village in Africa or the Caribbean and digging ditches, running electricity etc…. The projects I am involved with however while important are softer in nature. They revolve around education and shifting people’s views, things that are not as clear on the outside, but still very important. But I digress…

Back to the training and my weekend in Bucharest. By far the highlight of the weekend was the discovery of Dr. Pepper. You heard me right, we have Dr. Pepper here! Friday night we had American junk food night; Dr. Pepper, peanut butter, chocolate, McDonald’s and Cheeto’s. A night of pure comfort food, and movie watching, it was very enjoyable. I was in meetings the rest of the weekend ending finally on Sunday at about noon. So it was off to the train station and more fun with tickets. I had purchased a ticket for my trip back before left Oradea, but over the weekend I realized it was for the wrong time. After a little back and forth and more money I was on the correct train and headed home. This is the part of the trip that is not usually enjoyable (10 hours on a train in the middle of the day and night) but thankfully a friend of mine was traveling with me. The train was packed though so we spent most of the time in the Bar car playing cards where I was soundly whooped in Rummy. I finally got home a little after midnight, and it the start of another week.

(I have also posted some new pictures of Bucharest on my online photo album)